Two Students—One Not Even a Christian—Wanting to Make People Smile, Place Statue of Jesus in their School

Teresa Neumann : May 29, 2008
Staff - AP

"Most people were smiling when they saw it."

(Bristol, Vermont)—A class at Mount Abraham Union High School was recently required to read a play called, "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail," about Henry David Thoreau's refusal to pay taxes over what he said was the U.S. "immoral" war in Mexico. As a way of illustrating what they had learned, students Torin Olivetti and Galen Helms erected a small, 2-ft. statue of Jesus in the school claiming that the school was being hypocritical "on the issue of separation of church and state" (since it already had a mural depicting the Greek god Apollo) and that the issue "parallels Thoreau's feelings about hypocrisy by the U.S. government." (File photo: aspencountry.com)

Said Helms, who is not a Christian: "My thesis was that the government and the administration of our school is often hypocritical in what they allow and what they do not allow." (The statue of Jesus was eventually ordered to be removed.)

"People, when they saw it [the statue of Jesus], some people were praying next to it, which is perfectly legal," said Olivetti, 17. "Some people were patting it on the head. Most people were smiling when they saw it."

Richard Steggarda, a teacher at the school, was quoted as saying the statue wasn't intended to be derisive and lamented the inequality of rights for Christians in public schools.

When the school's principal, Paulette Bogan, asked the boys what their purpose of erecting it in the school was, she replied that they "basically wanted to make people smile."