"Zinc said he was instructed to read the Pledge of Allegiance in different languages that week to promote diversity, but received a hail of backlash for it"
Upstate New York high school reads Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic, angering some students and leading to district apology
The upstate New York high school senior who ignited furor over the Arabic reading of the Pledge of Allegiance was trying to show the great cultural rift in the nation when he divided the student body.
"A lot of people said stuff like, 'You're waking up terrorism in America,'" Andrew Zinc, 18, told the Daily News. "I was expecting outrage from the student body ... I wasn't expecting it to get this big."
Zinc, the elected student assembly president, sparked controversy Wednesday at Pine Bush High School when he allowed another student to recite the country’s oath of allegiance in Arabic during the school’s Foreign Language Week celebration.
The girl, identified as Dana and believed to be Muslim, asked Zinc permission before she took over the loud speaker following his daily morning announcements.
"As soon as she asked, I knew without hesitation I would say yes,” he said. “I felt impassioned about it because I knew what would happen. I knew people wouldn't like it.”
“The point of reading it in another language is that it doesn't matter what language you speak,” the teen added. “America is defined by what you believe, not what you speak or how you look. I wanted everyone to see this so we could see that deep cultural divide."
Zinc said he was instructed to read the Pledge of Allegiance in different languages that week to promote diversity, but received a hail of backlash for it.
In some classrooms, students reportedly catcalled during the reading or sat down in protest.
The reading “divided the school in half,” Superintendent Joan Carbone told theTimes Herald-Record. It also caused students to harass Dana, Zinc said.
"That poor girl was crying in school yesterday. People would not leave her alone,” he said.
The school also allegedly canceled its Foreign Language Week following the outrage and banned Zinc from reading announcements for the rest of the year, he claims.
"No matter how much our administration says we accept and promote diversity, that is clearly not true,” Zinc said. "I just wanted to start a conversation, and it's disappointing to me that administration is trying to kick this under the rug instead of talking about it."
Principal Aaron Hopmayer, who has apologized for the Arabic announcement in a building-wide announcement, did not immediately return a call for comment to confirm.
Reading the Pledge in different languages to "promote diversity" is as specious an argument as schools having Western teens wear the hijab to "promote diversity". To let stand the religious relativism that all are equal (from Western norms) does not promote diversity, it instead distances the ability to delineate the differences, or identify possible friction in that religion when measured against Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or any other mainstream religious belief.
Our schools are not the unbiased bastions of free speech they used to be, they are propaganda machines churning out programmed graduates with little real knowledge of the world at large.
From NY Daily News March 19 by Jason Silverstein and Melissa Chan
The upstate New York high school senior who ignited furor over the Arabic reading of the Pledge of Allegiance was trying to show the great cultural rift in the nation when he divided the student body.
"A lot of people said stuff like, 'You're waking up terrorism in America,'" Andrew Zinc, 18, told the Daily News. "I was expecting outrage from the student body ... I wasn't expecting it to get this big."
Zinc, the elected student assembly president, sparked controversy Wednesday at Pine Bush High School when he allowed another student to recite the country’s oath of allegiance in Arabic during the school’s Foreign Language Week celebration.
The girl, identified as Dana and believed to be Muslim, asked Zinc permission before she took over the loud speaker following his daily morning announcements.
"As soon as she asked, I knew without hesitation I would say yes,” he said. “I felt impassioned about it because I knew what would happen. I knew people wouldn't like it.”
“The point of reading it in another language is that it doesn't matter what language you speak,” the teen added. “America is defined by what you believe, not what you speak or how you look. I wanted everyone to see this so we could see that deep cultural divide."
Zinc said he was instructed to read the Pledge of Allegiance in different languages that week to promote diversity, but received a hail of backlash for it.
In some classrooms, students reportedly catcalled during the reading or sat down in protest.
The reading “divided the school in half,” Superintendent Joan Carbone told theTimes Herald-Record. It also caused students to harass Dana, Zinc said.
"That poor girl was crying in school yesterday. People would not leave her alone,” he said.
The school also allegedly canceled its Foreign Language Week following the outrage and banned Zinc from reading announcements for the rest of the year, he claims.
"No matter how much our administration says we accept and promote diversity, that is clearly not true,” Zinc said. "I just wanted to start a conversation, and it's disappointing to me that administration is trying to kick this under the rug instead of talking about it."
Principal Aaron Hopmayer, who has apologized for the Arabic announcement in a building-wide announcement, did not immediately return a call for comment to confirm.
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