http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/t … t/19499098An anti-Semitic game played by high school students near the desert resort city of Palm Springs has landed them in hot water, even as school officials say there's little they can do by way of punishment because it happened off school grounds.
The game, called "Beat the Jew," involved "Nazis" in cars racing a "Jew" on foot to a checkpoint on Highway 111, a major north-south route through La Quinta, near Palm Springs. The Desert Sun newspaper reported that some 40 students played the game, which also had a Facebook page until it was taken down late last week.
The game was discovered after a fellow student reported the Facebook page to school officials.
Parents, school officials and Jewish activists, including officials from the Anti-Defamation League, were outraged, and one local rabbi demanded the students be punished. In an open letter to the editor also published on the ADL's website, Southwest Regional Director Amanda Susskind said the organization "was shocked," but also lauded the unidentified student who blew the whistle and the school officials who quickly condemned the game.
"The proliferation of online social networking has led to the growing and troubling phenomenon of online hate and cyberbullying," Susskind said. "While the First Amendment protects most hate speech, we do not have to accept hate on the Internet as something that we are powerless to confront."
Susskind offered the organization's help in educating students about anti-Semitism. "Prejudice is learned," Susskind said, "and can be unlearned."
Police said there appeared to have been no crimes committed. Since the game was played off school property, school officials were limited in their response. La Quinta High School Principal Donna Salazar said she "would expel [the students] if I could, but I can't." But she vowed to take steps to work with the students, including taking up the ADL's offer to help with programs.
"This behavior is so offensive and inexplicable that it appears that everything we have been doing isn't enough for every student," Salazar told The Desert Sun.
Sounds like a fun game.
Anyway does anyone else think it's completely outrageous for the ADL and the local school to have FB remove the page about the game the students were playing? Of all the world's problems does the ADL have nothing better to do than take down FB pages? Also why the hell does the principal want to expel anyone? Nobody seems to have been seriously hurt by this silly game and it has zero effect on the school. Overboard response by the ADL, the school, and parents.
On a sidenote, if ever there is cause for racism, it might have something to do with overboard responses by anti-racism groups to minor little non issues.
