The Baltimore blues

According to the Baltimore Sun, a man named Brandon Jenkins is suing a Baltimore community college, claiming he was denied admittance because he mentioned God during an interview.

OK, so eschewing the inane fact that there’s a community college in Baltimore that interviews perspective students, let’s get on to everything wrong with this story.

First of all, rejecting a perspective student because of his religious beliefs? This is, like, illegal, or at the very least highly unethical; therefore, it would be pretty stupid for a college to do this.

So at first glance, this just sounds like some Bible-thumping moron angry that he’s too stupid to get into a community college.

Also, Jenkins, in all his holiness, has a criminal record that includes drug and theft charges. So, here’s your answer: he didn’t get rejected because of his religious beliefs. It’s because he’s a criminal. Right?

Wrong.

Jenkins reached out for an explanation. The director of the program he was applying to, Adrienne Dougherty, sent him an email in response saying, “I understand that religion is a major part of your life ... however, this field is not the place for religion.”

Go ahead and read that again.

Dougherty, in her atheistic and infinite wisdom, literally admitted that Jenkins’ religion was a part of his being denied.

Now, maybe religion shouldn’t be a part of the field Jenkins wanted to study — radiation therapy, FYI — but for a college spokesperson to come right out and say that is just stupid. I don’t know what else to call it.

I could make a good community college joke here, but I’m going to go ahead and take the high road.

In an ironic twist that probably isn’t even that ironic because we’ve already established how stupid the people at Community College of Baltimore County are, spokesperson Hope Davis, when reached for comment about the debacle, said,

“We have so many people from so many different backgrounds and so many different cultures. Just to think that we would discriminate based on religion ... it’s just not something that we do.”

Oh, OK, Hope. Whatever you say.

The really unfortunate part about all this is that it’s going to get the Religious Right all fired up about religious freedom — as if they aren’t already constantly fired up about it.

Of course, we should have the right to believe whatever we want. I just don’t want to hear conservatives bitch and moan about it any more than they already do.

I’ll end on a Marx quote that I personally modified to fit this occasion: religion may be the opiate of the masses, but discrimination is far worse than any drug.

zipperr@indiana.edu
@rileyezipper