So, not only is Facebook helping to find friends, criminals, and background checks for jobs, now you can get a $100 fine for using the popular Social Media outlet. Well, that's if you're a student at this all-girls Jewish school in Brooklyn.
Apparently, the head of an all-girls Jewish school in Brooklyn thinks Facebook is not "modest" enough for his students, so he fined 33 of them $100 for using it. The teens from Beis Rivkah High School in Crown Heights were also ordered to delete their accounts last week. Wait a minute! Brooklyn is still in America right? It wasn't moved to Israel last I checked. Okay, I get the whole banning it from school thing, but fining the children a $100, and forcing them to delete their accounts is absolutely ridiculous! You can't stop a student from using Facebook on their own time at home if they found entertainment and enjoyment out of it. By asking them to delete their accounts, that's what you're asking, and that's wrong!
According to the school's head administrator Rabbi Benzion Stock, the school has had an eternal ban from whenever Facebook started, so this is not a new ban. He went on to state that Facebook is not a modest thing for a Jewish girl, or man or woman or student, or father to be on. He feels there is a lack of privacy and dignity. Though, these might be true, who is this Rabbi to tell people what they can or can't do? I'm not really well-versed on the Hasidic Jewish faith, but man, are they a bossy bunch, huh? Shouldn't it be up to the parent or the person, themselves, to decide whether or not they want their private information out there for the public to see? Or shouldn't it be their decision to say what is modest or not for them, and not the head of their school to decide? Am I making it a little obvious that I am totally against this?
The Hasidic school has had a ban on the site for several years, but as "liking", "friending", and "poking" became more popular, all 495 students were told to sign a formal contract not to use Facebook this year. Well, here is where I say the girls are wrong. If there was a contract not to use the site from the beginning of the school year, just wait till you get out of school to use it. Apparently, administrators cracked down last week after receiving word that girls were still updating their statuses and sharing photos while in class. Well, duh! No, wonder they got caught, but $100 fine? Really? All 33 girls agreed to delete their accounts and they paid the $100 fine that will be returned at the end of the school year.
Not all students were opposed to the strict ban, though. One 14-year-old stated that she thought the Principal was right, and that it was about modesty, which is part of their religion. She went on to say that all of her friends, who had a Facebook page, took them down because they had everything they needed: they already had their friends and their Gmail accounts. Hey, that shut the rest of us, Facebook users, up, huh? But, if I'm not mistaken, didn't one of the tribe create Facebook? Mark ZUCKERBERG? I guess word "modesty" wasn't in his Torah!
All ORGANIZED religions are a cult. Practice morality instead. Morality is doing what is right despite what you are told, Religion is doing what you are told despite what is right.
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