I'm not the person who typically writes about topics that deal with politics, but the budget that Betsy Devos purposed earlier this week transcends politics. The fact that her budget purposes the slashing of funding for Special Olympics in the field of education is a topic that concerns each and every one of us. At its heart, Special Olympics strives to provide equal opportunities to ALL people. What Betsy Devos is purposing takes that and throws it out the window.
I will be quite honest, I haven't done a significant amount of research on her budget or exactly what it says about slashing funds for Special Olympics, but that doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is that if this bill passes it ostracizes an entire population of people from enjoying the freedoms of participating in sports. Not to mention, it is essentially saying that the Special Olympics program isn't worth funding. If we are saying that, then what does that say about how we view those athletes who participate in Special Olympics? They're inferior to us? If that's what we are trying to say, then I'm sorry but we've gotten something royally screwed up along the way.
For us to sit here and take away this program from thousands of students all over the United States will NEVER be OK. I may not know a lot about budgeting or what exactly Betsy Devos purposed for other programs, but I can take a wild guess that other sports programs were not purposed to be slashed. If that is the truth, I'm sorry but that is not right at all. The people that participate in Special Olympics are no different than you and me. They are humans just as we are, and they deserve to be treated as so. They deserve to have the exact same opportunities that everyone else has, including athletics!
Betsy Devos, you screwed this one up.
I truly don't understand how the United States Secretary of Education could, or would, ever think this is a program that should be defunded, or have funds taken from them, in any capacity. I may not have the understanding of someone who has spent years looking over budgets and having to make hard decisions on where to pull funds or add funds, but this I will take a stance on. I have a number of friends who have siblings who participate in Special Olympics and they are just as special and important as any football player who's working towards a Division 1 scholarship.
At the end of the day what this comes down to is how we view others who appear to be "different" than we are. If we saw the athletes that participated in the Special Olympics on the same level as the high school athletes that hundreds of people come out to see under the blinding lights on a Friday night this wouldn't even be a topic of discussion. But the reality is we don't have eyes like God does all the time. We fail to see each other as equals and that's where the entirety of the problem lies. I'm not saying this as someone who has all the answers or has it all figured out, but as someone who realizes that this is an issue and desperately needs to be fixed. So America, let's wake up and get with the times. Let's start seeing each other as equals and stop showing so much partiality.
To Betsy Devos, and anyone else working on this budget, I beg of you to please reconsider the slashing of funds from Special Olympics programs. These students deserve to be able to have a place where they can participate in sports and be shown that they are just as important as anyone else. I know it's not a simple fix and it requires a lot of hard decisions to be made, but I think as human beings this is something we need to stand up for. Keep Special Olympics in school unless you are prepared to defund all athletic programs. That's all I'm trying to say.