{"id":11958,"date":"2024-10-31T09:25:17","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T13:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=11958"},"modified":"2024-10-31T09:25:17","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T13:25:17","slug":"students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/10\/students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces.html","title":{"rendered":"Students Fight Back After School Bans \u201coffensive\u201d Cross Necklaces"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Adobe Stock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Students at a school in Victoria, Australia are fighting back after the school banned wearing cross necklaces for being \u201coffensive.\u201d Methodist Ladies\u2019 College (MLC), a prestigious girls\u2019 school in Melbourne informed students that they would no longer be permitted to wear cross necklaces as they might be offensive to other students. One anonymous student reported<\/a> how a friend of hers was asked to remove a cross necklace after another student found it offensive. \u201cMy friend was wearing a cross, and there was another girl in our class who said she found the cross really offensive, and so the teacher told her to take it off. My friend\u2019s parents, who are very religious, tried to get answers from the school and were told, \u2018It\u2019s not a good look for the school.\u2019\u201d According to the student, the school is giving into a \u201cminority\u201d of students. \u201cThis is supposed to be a religious school, but they are listening to minority opinion rather than mainstream religious students.\u201d<\/p>\n

A school spokesperson<\/a> pushed back on the claims, while stating diversity is an important value of the school. \u201cWe are deeply committed to fostering a culture of inclusion, respect, and diversity. Our Christian heritage serves as a foundation for welcoming individuals of all faiths, cultures, and backgrounds, fostering an environment where every student is supported in expressing their identity and beliefs.\u201d The school has denied claims<\/a> that students have been allowed to wear \u201cfurry\u201d tails and rainbow symbols. \u201cRecent media reports included claims that Methodist Ladies\u2019 College (MLC) students were told to remove Christian jewellery because it was offensive, while others were attending school wearing furry ears and tails. These statements are false and irresponsible,\u201d said the school. \u201cMLC is a proudly Christian girls\u2019 school. We do not find Christian symbols offensive. We aim to apply a consistent uniform policy that prohibits visible jewelry. We do not have any students attending school wearing furry tails and ears.\u201d The school stated the current policy \u201censures that every student adheres to the same standard of presentation, fostering unity within our diverse community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Chavura, a history lecturer and author, scoffed at the school\u2019s use of \u201cinclusive.\u201d \u00a0\u201cWe know now that the word inclusivity means exclusivity, and the word diversity means uniformity, but I want to praise these girls for standing up to woke bullying,\u201d he said<\/a>. He encouraged students to continue wearing their crosses. \u201cWear your crosses, if you have a cross turn up to school and wear it, send a message to other students and teachers and to the school in general, that this is a Christian school, it is not a Marxist woke school.\u201d Melbourne Baptist pastor, Murray Campbell, praised the girls for pushing back against the ban. \u201cWell done to the girls who are standing up to the bullish behavior of the school. Well done to the students who are defending their fellow students, whether they are of Christian faith or not.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students at a school in Victoria, Australia are fighting back after the school banned wearing cross necklaces for being \u201coffensive.\u201d Methodist Ladies\u2019 College (MLC), a prestigious girls\u2019 school in Melbourne informed students that they would no longer be permitted to wear cross necklaces as they might be offensive to other students. One anonymous student reported…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":11952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christian-news","category-church"],"yoast_head":"\nStudents Fight Back After School Bans \u201coffensive\u201d Cross Necklaces<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/10\/students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Students Fight Back After School Bans \u201coffensive\u201d Cross Necklaces\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Students at a school in Victoria, Australia are fighting back after the school banned wearing cross necklaces for being \u201coffensive.\u201d Methodist Ladies\u2019 College (MLC), a prestigious girls\u2019 school in Melbourne informed students that they would no longer be permitted to wear cross necklaces as they might be offensive to other students. One anonymous student reported…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/10\/students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Christ News Today\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-10-31T13:25:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2024\/10\/cross-necklace_credit-Adobe-Stock.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"900\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Cecilia Buchanan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Students Fight Back After School Bans \u201coffensive\u201d Cross Necklaces","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/10\/students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Students Fight Back After School Bans \u201coffensive\u201d Cross Necklaces","og_description":"Students at a school in Victoria, Australia are fighting back after the school banned wearing cross necklaces for being \u201coffensive.\u201d Methodist Ladies\u2019 College (MLC), a prestigious girls\u2019 school in Melbourne informed students that they would no longer be permitted to wear cross necklaces as they might be offensive to other students. One anonymous student reported…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/10\/students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces.html","og_site_name":"Christ News Today","article_published_time":"2024-10-31T13:25:17+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1200,"height":900,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2024\/10\/cross-necklace_credit-Adobe-Stock.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Cecilia Buchanan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/10\/students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/10\/students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces.html","name":"Students Fight Back After School Bans \u201coffensive\u201d Cross Necklaces","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/10\/students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/10\/students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2024\/10\/cross-necklace_credit-Adobe-Stock.jpg","datePublished":"2024-10-31T13:25:17+00:00","dateModified":"2024-10-31T13:25:17+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/#\/schema\/person\/f0820942b588b1bdba133d7ca3c8eb6e"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/10\/students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/10\/students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/10\/students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces.html#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2024\/10\/cross-necklace_credit-Adobe-Stock.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/409\/2024\/10\/cross-necklace_credit-Adobe-Stock.jpg","width":1200,"height":900,"caption":"Adobe Stock"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/10\/students-fight-back-after-school-bans-offensive-cross-necklaces.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Students Fight Back After School Bans \u201coffensive\u201d Cross Necklaces"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/","name":"Christ News Today","description":"Christian News From Around the Globe","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/#\/schema\/person\/f0820942b588b1bdba133d7ca3c8eb6e","name":"rdewing","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/author\/rdewing"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11961,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11958\/revisions\/11961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}