UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, March 17, 1997
7A
Card game Magic focus of a New York lawsuit
School activities upset parents
The Associated Press
BEDFORD, N.Y. — A dispute over a game has turned into a lawsuit, which accuses a school district in New York of promoting satanism and occultism.
three families said that they had their religious freedom infringed upon at an assembly featuring a man dressed up as Abraham Lincoln, a science class studying the leftover evidence of an owl's lunch and a history lesson in a cemetery.
Bruce Dennis, supervisor of the Bedford Central School District, said that the lawsuit was a threat to schools everywhere.
Today, several parents plan to join the schools' defense against the 1996 federal court lawsuit by filing a friend-of-the-court brief. The next hearing in the case is set for April 25.
"We can't take apart the science or English curriculum because something seems to go against some part of a particular small group's belief system," said the Rev. Paul Alcorn, a minister who has two children in the schools.
"We would dismantle public education in this country. Maybe that's what they're trying to do." Alcorn said.
The dispute stems from a game
called Magic: The Gathering that children started playing in 1995 in Westchester County.
The Dungeons & Dragons-like strategy game, played with collectible trading cards, involves the supernatural. Some of the cards are lurid depictions of demons, and one shows a woman about to be sacrificed.
it's straight from Satan," said Mary Ann DiBari, a plaintiff who has 11- and 13-year-old granddaughters in the schools. "Human sacrifice, devil worship, spells."
A club was allowed to play the game on school grounds but not during class. Players and the school district said that it was a math game.
The lawsuit said that by allowing the game on school grounds, the district officially promoted and endorsed an occult activity and promoted satanism and occultism, pagan religions and New Age spirituality.
Besides the card game itself, the lawsuit said that:
**Third-graders were told to vener-
Third-graders were told to venerate pagan gods when a teacher had them make Hindu "idols." The teacher, Jackie Reizes, held up a paper elephant mask at a parents' meeting and said that it was the idol referred to in the suit. She added: "I think this speaks for itself."
On an excursion to a cemetery, fourth-graders were instructed to
"It's straight from Satan. Human sacrifice, devil worship, spells."
Mary Ann DIBarl grandmother of students
lie on the graves of dead children. The school district's lawyer Warren Richmond said that a volunteer was asked to lie on a grave to show how much smaller people were in the 18th century.
A touch of Irish in downtown Lawrence
A man dressed like Lincoln frightened some children when he said that Lincoln believed in ghosts. "It was just a fellow who gave a speech on Abe Lincoln," Richmond said.
Third-graders were forced to study owl pellets, the regurgitated bones and feathers of the birds' prey. It was just a science experiment.
"The allegations in the complaint have seriously distorted what are really very normal educational practices," Richmond said.
The Associated Press
Clinton's trip began a day later than planned to let her spend time with President Clinton, who is recovering from knee surgery. She left after he returned to the White House from Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he underwent surgery Friday to reattach a torn tendon.
ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. — Hillary Rodham Clinton left yesterday for Africa and a tour that she hopes will highlight the nation's interest in the continent's people.
First lady travels to Africa
Last week Clinton said that she expected the trip to broaden Americans' awareness of the need to engage with Africa.
"Instability in Africa, whether it is rooted in war, in terrorism, in organized crime, in disease ... touches us too." she said.
Clinton and her daughter Chelsea were bound first for Senegal, where they planned to visit Goree Island, once the hub of the slave trade to
America. And then they are headed to South Africa.
During her two-week tour, Clinton will highlight efforts under way in Africa to promoted education and health care for women and children. She also will stop at the war crimes tribunal in Tanzania that is investigating mass slaughter in Rwanda.
Other stops will be in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Eritrea.
President Clinton also has international travel on his schedule this week. He leaves Wednesday for Helsinki, Finland to have a summit meeting with Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
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