Southfield Grade School Lesson: 'Obama, Obama, Obama'

From the “This Isn’t Creepy At All Department”:

SOUTHFIELD -- Autumn Gresham cannot yet grasp the global impact of the nation's choice for president. She's only 8 years old.

But she paid homage to President-elect Barack Obama on Friday by painstakingly drawing dozens of red and blue hearts on a white poster surrounding his name.

“This is so exciting because he’s our first black president,” she said, smiling broadly while seated on the floor of the Brace-Lederle Elementary School gym during an assembly for Obama Day. Autumn was asked what his presidency means to the nation. “It means love,” she replied.

(“Political lesson: Schools find ways to integrate election into curriculum”).

Obama Day? I remember when the principal at Precious Blood School announced Kennedy’s assassination over the PA. He was the first Catholic president, and we were a private, non-government school, but we never had a Kennedy Day.

Then again, when did America ever look at the Kennedy years as historical?

But an Obama presidency, now that, if you'll pardon the pun (or if you don't) is a horse of a different color.

They could barely sit still as they squealed and compared posters while waiting for the program to begin. The First Family -- students dressed as Obama; his wife, Michelle; and their daughters, Sasha and Malia -- all dressed up in clothes fit for an inauguration, sat in front-row seats on the stage.

Steven Alexander II, 13, dressed in a tailored black suit and red silk necktie, said it was an honor to portray Obama.

“One of my teachers recommended me for this, and it is a wonderful opportunity to be in Barack Obama's shoes,” he said.

Steven reflected on the world impact: “Our world will move past racism, the economy will get better, and we won't have as many problems as we had when George Bush was in office.” Steven's father, Steven Alexander, 41, of Southfield, said he had tears in his eyes while watching his son address his classmates from the stage. As the younger Steven waved to them after his address, the students rose up holding their posters high and chanted, “Obama, Obama, Obama.”

“Yes, I did think it was possible that an African-American would one day become president,” said Steven's father. “I think God brought this man here to take care of things in the years ahead.”

I know I've always associated the Constitutional office of President with chanting. That’s just what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

Yes, and I’m sure God sent Obama to take care of things. This is His way of solving the problem of all those survivor babies after botched abortions.

UM-Dearborn Picked a Bad Time to Lie About Hidden Costs

Just in time for the University of Michigan Board of Regents’ announcement of tuition hikes raising UM-Dearborn student costs by 7.9%, (“With state aid down, U-M hikes tuition”), Dearborn Underground has obtained University documents showing how school officials planned to spend more than three times the officially stated cost of $25,000 to install Islamic ritual foot baths.

The documents also show that University officials knew the real costs months before UM-Dearborn Director of Public Relations Terry Gallagher began sending out talking points to inquiring alumni, taxpayers, and reporters: talking points falsely reporting the $25,000 figure, as well as misleading inquirers and news media about the public source of the funding.

Emails and other documents obtained from the University show that on June 4, 2007, in anticipation of planned news stories about the project in the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, Terry Gallagher drafted notes providing answers to key questions about the project.

Just before that, a posting by Debbie Schlussel a few days earlier, on May 30th, tipped off the public about the foot baths, in turn leading to angry inquiries to UM from alumni and concerned taxpayers. Debbie's post may have finally prodded the local media to finally report on the foot baths. (Dearborn Underground also posted the details on May 1 and again on May 28.). Prior to Debbie’s post, the University’s plan had managed to escape nearly all public notice and media attention.

All indications to date are that the University wanted it that way. Staying below the radar worked for many months, as UM's decision to install at least one of the foot baths in the campus University Center was made as early as October 12, 2006, when the subject was discussed at a meeting of senior University officers.

A June 5th email reveals that Gallagher sent his notes to ACCESS communications director, Hannan Deep, for her thoughts. Her reply expressed approval for his talking points, urging Gallagher to keep his responses on message, especially to keep repeating his “top key message: No tax payer dollars are being used for the project. (this seems to be everyone’s concern).” After that, Gallagher sent his talking points to UM staff as an aid for interviews and answering questions.

An internal copy of a memo from University Provost Susan Martin, also recommended the notes to UM staff, and described increased media attention “over the past several days.” Martin's memo said that “[S]ome of the information in the blogs and internet postings about the proposal is not accurate,” and were being reported “as if they are true.” As a remedy, Martin attached Gallagher's talking points.

Gallagher also forwarded his notes in responses to email inquires from unhappy alumni and taxpayers, and provided these "facts" to reporters as background information for articles they were writing. Detroit News reporter Karen Bouffard, and Detroit Free Press writer Niraj Wairkoo both received copies.

But it’s turning out that it was Gallagher’s talking points that are “not accurate” and have been widely reported “as if they are true.”

The Real Cost

For instance, under Gallagher's talking-points heading, “What is the cost of this project?”, the fact-sheet states, falsely, that:

“We have not yet received the proposal from the architect or solicited bonds bids yet, but we estimate that the total cost to install two foot-washing stations to be approximately $25,000.”

The stated amount is not accurate. According to a December 6, 2006 UM email, subject New Renovation Project Grants, the projected budget to “modify space to create 2 new footbaths and two new unisex TRs [toilet rooms]” was $80,000. A purchase order also was issued for the same project on April 3, 2007 for the same amount of $80,000. $10,000 of that was slated to pay fees for architectural firm designs and plans for the proposed renovations.

Nor is Gallagher’s statement accurate that the University hadn’t yet received proposals from the architect. Records reveal that the University had received at least two proposals from different architect firms in February and March 2007, respectively. Both proposals incorporated the University’s own proposed construction budget of $70,000. The University also told Debbie Schlussel at the end of May that only $2,000 had been spent so far; but the $10,000 invoiced by Niagara Murano had already been approved the previous April).

None of the records, proposals, budget items, or invoices anywhere mention a figure of $25,000.

The University will undoubtedly attempt to explain the $55,000 discrepancy as primarily the cost of constructing the 2 unisex toilet rooms already planned, leaving the installation of the foot baths as a minor portion only representing $25,000.

But there never was any separate plan to construct unisex toilet rooms absent the decision to install foot baths. Instead, the unisex toilet rooms now have to be built to provide suitable access to the foot baths, and to mitigate the loss of restroom space, including the loss of at least one existing handicapped toilet, resulting from the decision to install special foot baths.

Further, the University’s own talking points make clear that the whole project was intended to solve the very problems caused by Muslim students using restroom sinks to wash their feet:

“We believe that these modifications [to our existing facilities] will benefit all students by providing appropriate facilities that do not interfere with the use of existing restrooms.”

In the end, not only is the plan not going to add to the University's toilet facilities, but unimpeded access to the new toilet in the unisex restroom will be impossible with potentially hundreds of Muslim students needing to use the same room to wash their feet several times a day.

It's Still Public Money

Gallagher’s second talking point that's the real kicker:

“What is the source of the funding?

“No tax dollars are being used for the project; the funding is being drawn from fees assessed to our students for campus infrastructure maintenance and renovation.”

This is the number one bit of misinformation UM wants to spread. As Hannan Deep at ACCESS urged him, this is the University’s “top key message.”

And he’s stayed true to it. In response to a concerned taxpayer inquiry as recently as July 17, Gallagher gave this explanation:

“The proposed project will be paid for with funds received from an infrastructure fee collected from all students; those funds are part of the campus general fund. While the annual appropriation we receive from the state also is part of the campus general fund, the accounts are separate. It's clear that you disagree with this project and I don't expect to change your mind, but I believe we have consistently and accurately described the funding source.”

It doesn’t matter if the accounts are separate as long as they're all sourced to the general fund. There is no way that campus operations, facilities, and maintenance are paid for with student fees alone. Besides, students (or their parents) are required to pay those fees, they and their parents are certainly "the public," and once the money is handed over, its public money, as it's under the control of a government university. Do they really think they can make us believe this is not public money?

We can’t be certain if Sue Martin’s June 5 email to “All Staff,” claiming blogs were posting inaccurate information was meant to refer to the funding details, but it's a reasonable assumption. After all, in order to contradict the "not accurate" blogs, Martin attached Gallagher’s talking points to her email!

Neither our postings on May 1 or 28, nor Debbie Schlussel’s on May 30th, contained any inaccurate information about public funding. Debbie reported accurately that the money was coming from “the University of Michigan general fund.” She went on to explain, correctly, that "if you are a taxpayer, you're paying for them, as the general fund is made up of federal and state monies and paid tuition fees."

In fact, it is a reduction of state contributions right now that's behind the UM Board of Regents' decision to raise tuition.

And, as we saw above, Gallagher admits in his most recent email the money still comes from the campus general fund.

So there's no inaccuracy here

UM's Endorsement of Islam

And there's one more talking point I want to include:

“Why are you furthering a specific religion?

“We are not furthering one faith over another. Instead, we are providing a service that many of our students need and value. This project also means that other campus restrooms can better serve the needs of all students.”

This is the worst kind of language-twisting. Any action good or bad, from shoveling someone’s snow to pushing drugs to committing murder-for-hire, can be called “providing a service” that somebody “needs and values.” The point isn’t whether the University is providing a service, but whether the University is placing public resources at the service of a particular religion in an unlawful way.

Clearly, the foot-bath project is furthering Islam in preference to all other faiths, or to any purely secular point of view. All students, Muslim and nonMuslim, are required to pay student fees that in turn are diverted to support this project. Meanwhile, only one class of students stands to benefit from the foot baths--Muslim students.

And as for the project freeing up other campus restrooms to better serve the needs of all students, that's an example of solving one problem by creating another. It was the University that created the restroom problem in the first place by tolerating student misuse of the facilities.

Nor is it at all likely that installing only two foot baths, in different buildings, is going to solve the problem of “accommodating” 950 Muslim students, in addition to Muslim staff and faculty, whom we are told need to wash their feet before praying five times a day.

More likely than not, there are still going to be students far off in other campus buildings who aren't going to travel to the University Center or the Fairlane Center to wash their feet. There will still be misuse of the campus's other restrooms.

So the real cost: $80 grand. And now the Board of Regents are boosting tuition at UM-Dearborn 7.9%.

Which only makes the $80,000 price tag seem like an even worse idea.

Dawud Walid Explains It's All About Hygiene, Not Religion

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan branch of CAIR, posted the following comment on his personal blog ("U-M 'foot bath' station is about hygiene") in response to Karen Bouffard's article in the Detroit News on Tuesday:

"What escaped being printed in this story is that Muslims make ritual ablutions before prayers and that Muslims have been putting their feet in face bowls because washing feet is a portion of the ritual ablution. The University of Michigan-Dearborn is simply making provisions based upon hygiene concerns. The school cannot restrict the practice of Muslims washing themselves for prayer. "

Mr. Walid's comment illustrates the inconsistency in this whole controversy. On the one hand he cites the University’s “hygiene concerns,” and then on the other protests that UM can’t restrict Muslims from washing themselves for prayer. The truth is, no one has ever accused UM of attempting to restrict Muslims from washing themselves for prayer. Nor has UM up till now claimed that it is installing the foot baths in response to a hygiene issue.

Mr. Walid can’t have it both ways. This is either a hygiene issue, or it’s a prayer issue.

Since public colleges and schools throughout the civilized world for a century or more (with the possible exception of France) have been meeting the hygienic needs of students by means of rest rooms equipped with the standard flush toilets, water taps and wash bowls, I don’t know what Mr. Walid has in mind when he says this is a hygiene issue. I don’t really think he means to imply that the Muslim minority in the UM student body have any more need than anyone else to wash their feet, at least not for any reasons of good hygiene.

Mr. Walid admits as much when he tells us that Muslim students have been putting their feet in face bowls not to achieve better hygiene, but as “ritual ablutions before prayer.” (Perhaps Mr. Walid has in mind that it isn’t good hygiene for nonMuslim students to wash their face in bowls also being used to wash feet, and I would agree).

In any event, when people wash their feet in face bowls in these circumstances, the bowls are being put strictly to a religious purpose.

In fact, as reported in WorldNet Daily, ("Airport adds foot basins for Muslim cabbies"), the purification ritual is quite involved, and isn’t just made in preparation for prayer, but also incorporates prayers and praise to Allah:

"The Islamic purification ritual, known in Arabic as 'wudu,' involves a 10-step process, which includes:

1. Praising Allah while washing both hands up to the wrist three times, making sure that the water reaches between fingers and under rings.

2. Rinsing out the mouth thoroughly three times, using the right hand (the one not used for cleaning private parts) to bring the water to the mouth.

3. Snorting water into the nostrils from the right hand, three times, to cleanse them of demons that Muslims believe reside there, clearing the passages of any mucous using the left hand.

4. Washing off the tip of the nose with the left hand.

5. Washing the entire face three times from right ear to left ear.

6. Continuing to wash from forehead to throat.

7. Washing the right arm and then the left arm, three times, from the wrist up to the elbow, removing watches.

8. Moving wetted palms over the head from the top of the forehead to the back of the head.

9. Passing the wetted tips of the fingers into the grooves and holes of both ears, and also passing the wetted thumbs behind the ears and ear lobes.

10. Finally, washing both feet to the ankles starting with the right foot, including between the toes, then reciting: 'Ash-hadu an la ilaha illal lahu wa ashhadu anna Muammadan 'abduhu wa rasuluh' – meaning there is no god but Allah and he has no partners, and Muhammad is his servant and messenger. "

I want to say right off I'm not quoting this intending to mock anyone's religion. All religions have rituals and practices that seem strange to outsiders, including my religion. My point is that wudu entails not merely physical washing, but itself is an act of prayer and worship. It is no more intended for hygiene than baptizing a baby is.

And as described, wudu must be a tricky operation to have to attempt at a rest room sink, I’ll admit. But nowhere that the foot washing stations have been installed has anyone alleged that school authorities, (or employers such as at the Minneapolis airport), ever told Muslim students or employees they weren’t allowed to use the sinks for this purpose. The closest to this came when the administration at Minneapolis Community and Technical College rationalized the sinks as a “safety” issue after a single incident in which a student fell down trying to wash her foot in a standard sink.

From the Muslim student’s point of view, accomplishing his ritual is a religious problem to be solved: how to perform wudu within the confines of a western college lacking foot baths one would find in thoroughly Islamized countries? But this is his religious problem, not one the University needs to solve.

And that's how the trouble began here, when UM-Dearborn accepted the students’ religious problem as its own problem. The University undertook to resolve the issue of, “How can we make sure our Muslim students can perform wudu?”

We all know that no modern public college or school would ever undertake to ask, and commit its limited resources to answer, “How can we guarantee that our Baptist students can evangelize, our Catholic students can attend daily Mass, our Pentecostal students can conduct campus healing services, and our conservative Jewish students can avoid contact with Gentiles?” No public college would ever do so, because such active support and endorsement would clearly violate decades of Establishment Clause jurisprudence.

Moreover, the most indirect religious symbols of the majority faith have been banished from public spaces, lest the very sight of them cause fragile unbelievers to be offended or made to feel outsiders from the larger community.

I think a great deal of our courts’ “wall-of-separation” rulings are overreaching and wrong. Nonetheless, in our system, all citizens have to bear equally the weight of the law’s precedent. The legal standards may not be fair, but if they are applied at all, they should be applied equally.

We have been asked to accept that a Christmas crèche on school grounds or a rendering of the Ten Commandments in a courthouse are unlawful forcings of Christianity on any person unfortunate enough to even catch sight of them. At the same time, we are now being asked to accept that an elaborate foot washing station--not only symbolizing Islam, but an appurtenance of its most essential daily practice, just as patently religious as a baptismal font or a tabernacle--is somehow only a reasonable accommodation all but secular in its purpose.

Like too many of these kinds of things lately, the defenders of this don't believe a word of it, and have trouble keeping a straight face when they pretend they do. Decisions are being made to treat Islam as a special case, and that is why these things are getting by without a fight.

Muslim Foot Baths Finally Getting Noticed

As of 1:30 today the online poll at the Detroit News Online was running 92.56% to 2.84% against Michigan universities providing foot baths to encourage Muslim prayer rituals.

And to think Detroit’s newspapers had been ignoring this (until today) because it wasn’t controversial--or even news. I’d say comments running 93 to 3 against qualify as controversial. (“College's foot bath plans spark backlash").

DU has been talking about this for weeks. ("UM-Dearborn Teaches How One Foot Washes the Other"; Oh, That Wudu That You Do").

According to the Detroit News, over at Eastern Michigan University they’ve already built foot baths in the student union. EMU student union director Glenna Frank Miller said no one there raised any objections.

Ms. Frank Miller’s remarks are instructive:

"This concept of the foot-wash was coming up fairly regularly for student groups who might want to do a meeting or prayer group in the student center," she said. "It's been a lovely touch of appreciation for a prayer ritual that's just a little different than what most of us are used to."

A lovely touch of appreciation for a prayer ritual?

I have to assume Ms. Frank Miller is not a student of the history of "prayer rituals" in public schools, and their progressive legal banishment from classrooms and campuses since 1960 or so.

And the local ACLU thinks it's prefectly all right, too, "'arguing the foot baths are secular since non-Muslims could use them', said spokeswoman Rana Elmir."

When was the last time your local public school or college shelled out dough to show "a lovely touch of appreciation," let alone toleration, for the prayer rituals of Christians, Jews, or any other religious practitioners? Or even toleration for their religious symbols being displayed on campus?

Never, you say?

Then c'mon to Dearborn. We've got our own way of doing things here.