For the life of me, I can’t figure out why the Salt Lake City School District has suspended a cafeteria manager and a district supervisor over the flap that occurred after school lunches were taken away from a group of students whose cafeteria bills were in arrears. Was it because the lunches were thrown into the trash or was it because the incident cast the school district in a bad light? Was it because those in charge publicly humiliated a group of students or because it’s wrong to deprive any child of food? Tell me, please! Why?
I ask these questions because, just last week, as Salt Lake City students were having school personnel take away their food, millions of kids all across America were having food taken off their plates by Congress, and I haven’t heard that anybody in Congress got suspended. Nor have I heard the sort of public outcry that the Salt Lake City incident generated.
What am I talking about? Well, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a farm bill last week that takes nine billion dollars worth of food, in the form of food stamps, off the tables of millions of school children over the next ten years. That same bill also makes large cuts in the federal school lunch and school breakfast programs. Where’s the ruckus? Where’s the demand for Congressional heads? Is it really acceptable to starve a kid so long as it’s done without public humiliation?
And where’s the “pro life crowd” in all this mess? Where are their chants about the sanctity of human life? Why should it be a crime to prevent a fetus from being born, but not to starve a child once it’s here? That is, after all, what the food stamp program is designed to prevent, isn’t it?
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