Seattlest's AP US History teacher, George Henry, was something of a rabble-rouser at our Salt Lake City high school. At the time, we only barely appreciated that we were getting a hands-on miniature lesson in civil disobedience from the only African-American teacher at the school. What we knew at the time was that when the school board started debating talking about condoms and sex ed, George Henry started one of his lectures by replacing every noun in it with the word condom. "So during the condom treatise of the late 1880's, condoms became the most important condoms under discussion." Or something like that, you get the idea. He also sent us to steal tables from the football coaching offices when he was told there was no more budget for him to have an extra table (one extra table!) in his classroom; he instructed us to bar the door to his classroom with said table when the football coach came looking for it. Plus, he took his entire class (all white, mostly Mormon) to his baptist church where he played the organ every Sunday. And George Henry never once got suspended. But we also know that he never ran into the cafeteria and jumped up on the tables screaming obscenities--George Henry knew how to make a point without making a fool of himself.

So some tye-died science teacher just got the boot from a Moses Lake high school for apparently trying to "start a riot" after he was suspended for cracking a joke about Brigham Young University (which he attended). Sam Lyman is protesting outside the school because he claims not to have documented evidence of the reason for his suspension. Some students complained, apparently, but what Seattlest wants to know is, even if a couple kids did gripe, does the Mothership really care if it is called Breed 'Em Young University? If George Henry could run amok on a condom-filled tear in a Salt Lake City history class, why should some high school teacher in Washington state get suspended for a crass remark about a religion he once followed? None of the regurgitated AP stories had anything to say about that, but the more conservative of the two Salt Lake City newspapers did:

The old joke wasn't funny to a couple of BYU professors, but they didn't consider it offensive.
"It's kind of tired," said Eric Eliason, an English professor who specializes in folklore and humor. "It's not any sort of new, shocking thing at all. It seems like kind of an obvious play on the acronym that's mildly amusing and really not that funny. It's really an example of folk speech and playing with acronyms."
In fact, it's a common joke among Mormons, but many wouldn't appreciate others using it.
"It's something that BYU students themselves call BYU," Eliason said. "Scholars of folk humor call it the exoteric-esoteric factor in the telling of jokes. It's that idea that if you're an insider you can joke about things that are different if an outsider says it."
A religion professor who specializes in outreach and interfaith relations said the joke is inaccurate — Mormons are marrying and having children later and later in life — and divisive.
"Such generalizations rarely help to communicate anything," Robert Millet said. "It's like any categorization or pigeonhole or demonization you want to make: They are generally not very helpful because you're drawing a generalization that doesn't hold much water.
The same goes for Mormons, he said. He has counseled BYU students against stereotyping people of other faiths. And he said they shouldn't be hurt by Lyman's comment.
"We blow that off and go about our business," he said. "There's much more important stuff to do."

So that's a big collective yawn from two profs at the target of Lyman's outburst. Sounds like everyone in Moses Lake needs to take a cue from BYU, and move on to the more important stuff. It's possible that Lyman has a longer history of inappropriate behavior, but Seattlest can't help but wonder if there's any room left at all in our culture for teachers who are willing to steal a few tables when the time calls. We'd take a free-thinking mentor who can't keep their trap shut at all the appropriate moments over a hog-tied subservient of the school board and overly sensitive parents any day.