Serious weirdness in Broken Arrow, OK

I normally follow news of religious intolerance, but I’ve fallen behind lately, and only just heard of a weird case in Oklahoma. If there are any Dopers in the Tulsa area who know anything that might explain this, I’d like to hear about it.

The gist of it is that a Roman Catholic student at Union Intermediate High School, Brandi Blackbear, was accused by school officials of casting a spell on a ceramics teacher and making him sick. She was suspended for 15 days as a result. A more detailed summary can be found on the OCRT site under the heading 2000-OCT-28: OK: Student suspended for allegedly casting spell, and the complaint filed by the ACLU on her behalf can be seen on the ACLU’s site. The ACLU site goes into considerably more detail, including another incident in which school officials searched Blackbear’s belongings and confiscated notebooks containing her personal writings and short stories (she is an aspiring writer).

I thought the Burning Times were over! How can a child be suspended from school because an assistant principal decides to accuse her of witchcraft? Even if she were a Witch (she is apparently interested in Wicca, though perhaps only as source material), she is entitled to freedom of religion.

I don’t know. You can’t pray (legal hairsplitting aside) in school, makes sense you couldn’t cast “Spells” in school also.

But confiscating personal stuff is out of bounds tho. Doesn’t make any sense.

I actually started this thread in teh BBQ Pit about that very case. The discussion stayed pretty clean and focused, for the Pit, and has some more info on the case, if you’re interested.

I thought this was going to be about Broken Arrow the movie.

As to the OP:
I’m not convinced it’s a true story since it happened so close to Halloween and involves a “witch”.
If it IS true it’s outrageous. Suspended for 15 days for casting a spell? Is casting spells against school policy or something? How can they even prove it?

I think it’s true, because the lawsuit is posted here: http://www.aclu.org/court/blackbear_complaint.html It looks official enough, it’s on the ACLU site, and the ACLU is not known for playing pranks.

I just checked out the ACLU link so I guess this is for real.
I am stupified!

On the contrary, students can pray in school–as long as they don’t disrupt class. Certainly, I can see where a full Circle would be disruptive, but many (perhaps most) spells are visually indistinguishable from a quiet prayer. Of course, there’s no reliable indication that she cast a spell at all–certainly Wiccans are forbidden to cast the kind of spell the officials allegedly accused her of casting. I’m very glad we agree about the search and seizure though.

Beadalin, thanks for the reference. I don’t hang out in the Pit, so I missed it. I just posted it here in hopes of finding a little fresh info.

My knowledge of Pagan/Wicca isn’t great. I’m pretty sure that if it came down to it, the Supreme Courts would have to rule that spells would fall into the same catagorey as prayer.

I think.

Maybe I’ll to read the link.

I don’t know which is more frightening in this case - the (literally) witch hunt mentality of the school :mad: or that people responsible for the education of the next generation actually believe that someone could cast a spell and make someone sick. :eek:

I live in Broken Arrow, OK… what a surprise to see this thread! Yeah…I saw it on the news. I guess the teacher apparently got sick after she “cast a spell.” I think the whole thing is goofy.

Well she IS entitled to freedom of religion but that doesn’t afford her the right to cast spells on others though does it?

How they’d prove it is another thing entirely of course.

Did I mishandle a nuke again? Whoops! Sorry, my bad . . .

Tripler
Damn beer . . .