My school's community service policy (while ambiguous throughout the whole thing) Seems to me to discriminate against not only religions, but my religion specifically. The particular clause I'm referring to states
Your community service project must benefit a group, organization, or person outside of your household, immediate and extended family. Eagle Scout, Church-related or court-ordered community service hours may not be used for this Project.
(Emphasis not mine)
The particular portion of this clause, the last part; "Eagle Scout, Church-related or court-ordered community service hours may not be used for this Project." is what I'm at ends with. The project makes a specific statement to disallow all service associated with "Churches", in the same clause it refuses to accept projects being used for other purposes.
And to add confusion to the mess, the phrase, IMHO is unnecessarily ambiguous, stating "Church-Related" instead of being specific as to what is and isn't allowed. I've asked my guidance councellors as to what is and isn't allowed in terms of this, and they said to ask my PE teacher, as they (as per stated) are in charge of the Volunteer Community Service Project (VCSP). My PE teacher told me they can clarify questions during a pre-approval phase for the project. As I understand it, that phase goes like this:
- The student signs up for service or alerts the organazition and recieves permission to perform it.
- The student goes to their PE teacher and asks if the project can be used for the VCSP
- The student can ask questions about the VCSP (For some reason, only if they've already prepared a project)
- The PE teacher either approves or denies the project, citing a reason if denied.
This whole process makes no sense to me and seems completley illogical, so I figured that before I schedule any more projects that I find out if there are casses of similar organaztions to my school losing similar cases to this.
Some Details
- The school is a public school, Located in Rhode Island (United States)
- The Project is required to graduate
- To my knowledge, the school has never had problems with policies before
- I am a minor