Politics & Current Events
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Sybil-Are you following the Vanderbilt/State legislature craziness.
Thankfully the governor veto the legislation, but I don't understand why these "christian" groups have their panties in a wad about Vandy's "all-comers" policy for official organizations.
Re: Sybil-Are you following the Vanderbilt/State legislature craziness.
Vanderbilt has been enforcing its "all-comers" policy which means anyone can join any student group they want and you can't have qualifications to run for the group's office. i.e. technically a jewish kid could run to be president of the baptist student association.
The state legislature passed a bill that said student groups could discriminate if the private school received more than 24M in funding from the state... funnily, Vanderbilt receives $24M every year from the state to reimburse it for uninsured care.
Thankfully the governor vetoed it because all the old money republicans on the board of trustees at Vandy were pissed that the social conservatives passed this under the guise of christian persecution.
Above Us Only Sky
I hope you guys don't mind my butting in here (um, this board is dead)....but this doesn't makes sense to me. Can you explain this?
2V-It makes no sense to me (well the vanderbilt policy makes sense--if you want to be a recongized campus group, receive funding and allowed to use space on campuse you have to allow any student who wants to belong to your group, belong). What doesn't make sense is all these groups (primarily baptist student union) being upset about it.
Apparently Vandy enforced the policy after the baptist tried to kick two openly gay students out of the group.
What doesn't make sense about the legislature sticking their nose in, is who cares if everyone must join? 1) if an athiest shows up and joins your group it is an opportunity to convert and 2) the rule that requires everyone be able to run for office doesn't mean it you have to elect someone who doesn't represent your ideals. IF an athiest was to run for head of baptist students, why would the other members of the group vote him or her to be president?
Above Us Only Sky
2V, I'm hazy on the details right now (just had a fabulous sangria filled lunch
, but the school has a non-discrimination policy. They have said that such a policy also applies to any student group, not just to its own treatment of students.
What precipitated this current debate was a gay student in a Christian group who was denied membership. Because of that, the school looked into the bylaws of all the student groups and found about 6 (of 300+) that were not in line with the non-discrimination policy. One of those groups was a Christian law student group who then, after being told they had to revise their policy, decided to sue the school. Their argument is that if they're a Christian group they should be allowed to discriminate against non-Christians. The school disagrees.
I'll try to dig up links if you're interested. If the search function on this board worked, I'd find a post I wrote about it a few months ago.
I was also there over the debate about changing the name on a dorm from confederate to memorial. It went to the state supreme court. It was disgusting.
I have no idea what prompted the state to get involved (christian "persecution" claims are what I assume), but tying state funds to a requirement to allow students to discriminate seems pretty ridiculous. Usually it's the opposite, like catholic adoption agencies being required to not discriminate against gay couples.
OK this makes more sense. These students were Baptist, but also gay. It seems to me that this group missed an opportunity to be charitable. This doesn't mean the group couldn't still talk about the Bible as they understand it, right? In other words, would you all be okay/would the school be okay with this (Baptist) group instructing their beliefs about homosexuality? Or would they still be considered discriminatory?
And thank for mentioning the adoption agencies...that's what I was refering to in the second part of my pp. I see that it is the opposite.
I have no problem with the groups being anti-gay in their theology. In fact, it's kind of what college is about, exploring lots of viewpoints. Vandy is where I first learned the arguments against homosexuality and against gay marriage, and it was done in a respectful exchange with religious friends, very similar to this board actually. I often went to their student groups, too, although I often disagreed.
There used to be an intelligent design club, too, and all the biology professors would show up to meetings to engage them. I fully support that as well.
You just can't deny membership or a chance to run for office.
Fair enough!
Now US Congress wants to say something....
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120507/NEWS02/305070076/Members-Congress-target-Vanderbilt-policy?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
Above Us Only Sky