|
|
This tempest is not a local one, but from a school district near Las Vegas, Nevada. Class valedictorian Brittany McComb wanted to thank her Lord and Savior in her speech, but school administrators censored her text. McComb, believing she was protected by the First Amendment, gave the valedictory as she had originally intended, Biblical references and all. The administration cut her mike off partway through the valedictory.
As best I can tell from the sketchy news reports about the incident, McComb wanted to witness to her faith. According to the school district’s own rules, such professions are permissible, as reported in the Las Vegas Sun. She was not intending, she says, to proselytize.
The administration, for its part, did not want to appear to be favoring any one religion, and tried to censor the controversial parts out. School officials apparently did not consider McCombs to be a particularly spunky individual, or they might have expected her reaction.
Church ministers and youth leaders encourage teenagers to speak about their faith, to witness to the unconverted. So McComb had that motivation. She is also a teenager, with the usual adolescent resentment of authority. The school’s decision to censor her text was, in these contexts, ill-advised.
The American Civil Liberties Union is siding with the school on this one, believe it or not. Here is where I have to disagree with the ACLU. As long as McComb was not preaching or proselytizing, she was protected by the First Amendment and the school’s own rules. The school’s and ACLU’s contention that the valedictory address constitutes a school-sponsored medium, and therefore implies unconstitutional school support of McComb’s Christian faith, is bogus, IMHO. They, however, cite legal precedents in US Circuit Court cases.
Possibly related posts:
So, this evening we graduated 41 seniors, with none of the church-state drama some other Kentucky high schools are suffering through. In fact, our ceremony was, as usual, quite pleasant.
Being a small school helps, since reading only 30-40 names goes a lot quicker than 300-400 or more, but we have honed the ceremony down to the essentials.
Herewith is a summary of the evening’s festivities. Times are approximate, since I was not really keeping track of time.
At 5:45, students enter auditorium to precessional by brass quartet, followed by faculty.
Invocation, very non-denominational, by female Episcopal minister. (3 minutes)
Head of school offers welcoming remarks and addresses class. (About 10 minutes)
Alumni award is given to a member of class of ’84. (About 15 minutes)
Featured speaker is departing history teacher, who recalls his youthful optimism of the late ’60s and charges the seniors with the task of retaining theirs. Then he sings the Bob Dylan song, “Forever Young,” accompanied by one of the seniors on guitar. Who knew he could sing? [Last year, a math teacher danced during his speech. Don't ask.] (About 15 minutes)
Honors graduates are recognized, Commonwealth Diploma graduate recognized. (10 minutes)
Awards are given to five students. (20 minutes)
Possibly related posts:
More gems from science bloggers. Check it out!
Permanent link to this post (9 words, 1 image, estimated 2 secs reading time) Possibly related posts:
Well, I haven’t been blogging much lately, since the non-blogging side of life has been keeping me so busy. Having an intermittent internet connection while Insight Broadband upgraded its infrastructure didn’t help either.
The school year here is winding down, which paradoxically means teachers (and most students) have more work to do than usual. Our seniors have to present their exit projects, which requires their graders to set aside time to witness the presentations and then to meet to discuss the projects’ grades. There are papers to grade, review guides to prepare, and a bushel of other organizational tidbits that have to be taken care of before we roll up the hallways for summer break.
On the more personal side, we have adopted a dog, which of course requires me to take him on regular walks. And now that we have finished our move, a ton of boxes to sort through.
This time of the year is an emotional one for high school communities. Ours is a small school, so the seniors develop strong bonds with one another and with their fellow students and their teachers. We teachers get to know these kids pretty well, so saying goodbye can sometimes be a wrenching experience. Imagine sending your kids off to college not just once per kid, but 20 to 40 times each year, and you’ll get some perspective into what I am talking about. I’ve been doing this goodbye thing now for 21 years, and I’ll tell you, it doesn’t get any easier.
Possibly related posts:
Robertson’s latest target is the group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, which yesterday Robertson claimed has been infiltrated by Communists and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
During his daily appearance on The 700 Club, Robertson condemned Americans United for its opposition to using government funds to support prison ministries. Robertson particularly lambasted Barry Lynn, a minister and the group’s executive director.
Robertson repeated a falsehood to the effect that Lynn’s understanding of church and state separation would mean that city fire departments could not respond to a church fire. “Barry Lynn is so extreme, he has said that if a church is burning down, the city shouldn’t bring the fire department and trucks to spray water on the church because that violates separation of church and state,” Robertson said on his program.
By that argument, cities could also not supply churches with electricity, water or gas, collect their trash, or inspect their buildings for code violations.
Lynn had a biting response to Robertson’s blatherings.
“Americans United does not want to remove religion from the public square,” said Lynn, who is a United Church of Christ minister. “All we want is for the government to stay out of religion and let Americans make their own decisions about matters of faith. We defend the religious liberty rights of all people, including Robertson.
Possibly related posts:
We have InsightBroadband service at home. It’s been pretty good, until this weekend. I can ping addresses, most of the time. Visiting websites is a touch-and-go process, though. Some pages load almost as fast as before. Others don’t load at all. Our VOIP service through Lightyear Alliance is out, too. I feel like I’m on the first step of a 12-step internet recovery program.
Insight is in the middle of some major hoohah “upgrade”, which is killing their customers’ internet access. The main problem is with the DNS servers, it seems. These are the servers that associate user-friendly website addresses with the numerical addresses computers use, sort of like electronic “phone books.” When the DNS servers are not working correctly, it can take forever to load a webpage, if you can at all.
Some users depend on their cable access for business purposes, and are going nuts right now. Insight, as you can expect, is resorting to the usual big-company boilerplate response. “We profusely apologize, etc., etc. Reboot all your equipment. Take two aspirin and call us in the morning.” I haven’t bothered calling customer support, since my networking skills are probably equal to (or maybe better) than their help desk staff’s.
We are just waiting it out. Meanwhile, I can’t do diddly with this site or the school’s websites, at least from home.
Permanent link to this post (225 words, 1 image, estimated 54 secs reading time) Possibly related posts:
This site was down briefly this afternoon and evening. Sorry for the outage. My webhost’s tech staff say there was a minor glitch with the database server. They have since fixed it, and all is well.
Permanent link to this post (37 words, 1 image, estimated 9 secs reading time) Possibly related posts:
|
Recent Comments