SB 2017-126: Protecting Our Students Act (Passed)

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I'm very open to suggestions on this one. The main idea is to protect vulnerable students who may be subject to discrimination at school. While I recognize the concerns of folks who don't want to see minority students given unfair advantages solely for being minorities, this bill outlines reasonable provisions to prevent students from being outcast in a place of scholarly inclusion.

Schools should foster equality. We see students of varying social and economic classes coming together in one place for a common goal: education. We should not turn our backs on the students whose identities are misrepresented in the media and therefore are considered "abnormal" by administrative policies. Making all students feel safe at school should be a top priority of this nation, and I believe we have to begin to set the tone vis a vis this issue.

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Thoughts? Comments? Questions?

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I like the idea of being open to all of the minorities listed here, but I wonder if some of the parts in section 4 and 5 are kind of overboard. Or maybe I'm not reading it right?

In the last sentence it sounds like schools are meant to make almost any accommodation someone could ask for as long as they have a medical, religious or cultural reason. So like... to make a horrible analogy from an overdone issue... if little Mary Mapleton is having a bake sale at the school to raise money for the yearbook. She makes a batch of her famous maple syrup and brown sugar cookies, which she sells to any students who want them. However, Sammy Swansong is an open lesbian who brings her younger brother Jeb! Swansong to school. Sammy wants to purchase one of Mary's delicious cookies to support her fundraiser, but Mary says that her religious beliefs mean that she is prohibited from offering the fruits of her labor to cretin sinners like Sammy. Is that a religious accommodation that schools can make for Mary?

Maybe it's an unrealistic demand like it says in section 5, but how do we determine what is an unrealistic demand and what isn't? I'm a little worried that schools in different parts of Atlasia might have different ideas about what counts as an accommodation and what counts as an unrealistic demand.

The section outlines accommodations strictly based on religious custom for non-Christian religions. Opposing homosexuality seems to be a result of religious interpretation, not strict religious doctrine. It's supposed to accommodate things like fasting standards for Muslim students and so on, not what religious leaders condemn as "sin".

Section 5 was tough. I tried to use the last sentence to clarify that accommodations not give students an advantage, like allowing transgender students to have special bathrooms with gold plated toilet seats and toilet paper made from $100 bills. That would be frivolous.

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Oh is "dietary accommodations in accordance with a student's religious or health needs, or any other religious, medical, or cultural standard" meant to apply to just the dietary part? I was thinking it was in addition to the dietary stuff in order to cover something that was left out of the language or something.

Maybe dress is something that should be included since that seems to be an issue in Islam, Judaism, and some other religions.

Another thing that I just thought of is are all of these things accommodations that would also be made to Christian students?

I could write up an amendment for dress codes.

Since Christianity is considered a majority religion in Atlasia (if we're going based off of figures for the RL USA) then it wouldn't fit into the scope of this bill. It seeks to strictly protect racial, sexual, gender, and religious minorities.

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Two concerns.

1. While I am very supportive of protecting religious, racial, and sexual minorities from discrimination, I am not wholly comfortable with the idea of defunding schools for the bad behavior of its administrators.  When ever education funding is cut, it's the students that stand to lose most, and inadequate funding would lower student performance and would not address the root cause of the problem of discrimination.

2. I firmly believe that religious freedom should be enjoyed by students of all faiths.  Christians should be allowed to pray if they desire as should Muslim or Jewish students, and the wearing of religious garb of all kinds (whether it be a cross necklace or a hijab) ought to be permitted in schools.  But I think section 4 does a good job protecting all religious groups as written.

I see your first point. It's why I included a provision to give those administrators six months to comply. I believe that's plenty of time for those students (and their parents) to put pressure on those administrators to comply. At the end of the day, the administrators are supposed to serve the students. They will not allow their schools to fail because of stubbornness.

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What are the "legally recognized non-Christian or Christian denominational faiths" mentioned in Section 2 exactly? I feel uneasy about potentially granting rights to members of so-called religious minorities but not to students of each and every Christian denomination, no matter whether it's a majority or minority denomination.

I can change the wording to include strictly religious accommodations for all faiths.

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soooooooo what's up with this

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Aye