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Posts tagged Education & schools

Nevada teen sues school officials

With the conservative Rutherford Institute representing her, high school valedictorian Brittany McComb (at right) has filed suit in federal court alleging that school officials infringed on her First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

Foothill High School (Henderson, Nev.) officials edited McComb’s valedictory before the June 15 graduation ceremony to eliminate what they judged to be overly religious references. McComb delivered her original speech instead, and school officials disconnected her mike just as she launched into a discussion how God and the suffering of Jesus on the cross had given meaning and focus to her life.

School officials said they were acting on the advice of the Nevada American Civil Liberties Union, and were trying to avoid running afoul of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause.

In her suit, filed in US District Court in Nevada, McComb names the principal, assistant principal and the school employee who allegedly pulled the plug. The suit claims her rights of free expression and equal protection under the law were violated when the mike was cut off.

The suit asks that the court declare that the officials infringed on those rights. (Details here.)

Don’t say I didn’t tell you a lawsuit would happen.

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July 14th, 2006 | Tags: Education & schools | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Yikes! Another graduation lawsuit!

The latest development in the continuing battle between free speech and the Establishment clause is a lawsuit brought by a high school senior against her school in Everett, Wash.

Kathryn Nurre, 18, contends in a suit filed last Monday in U.S. District Court that the superintendent of her school district violated her free speech rights when he vetoed her wind ensemble’s graduation musical selection.

Nurre, a sax player, and the other 16 members of the ensemble had chosen an instrumental arrangement of Ave Maria. The Everett School District superintendent, Dr. Carol Whitehead, believed the selection had too overt a religious theme, despite having no lyrics. She changed the graduation piece to one by Gustav Holst.

Nurre claims she and her fellow musicians had no intention of making a religious statement. They chose the arrangement, which the ensemble had already performed in 2004, on its musical merits.

Ave Maria, for the Latin-challenged, is “Hail Mary,” the beginning of the annunciation in Luke 1, in which the Angel Gabriel informs Mary of her unique position among women. It is a traditional Catholic prayer, taken from the Latin Vulgate Bible. Scores of musicians have set the text to music since the early Renaissance.

Even assuming the audience at Nurre’s graduation was aware of the history behind the piece, the performance of an instrumental version is hardly a violation of the separation of church and state. Merely playing music inspired by a composer’s faith does not constitute imposing a particular faith (Catholicism?) on the audience.

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July 2nd, 2006 | Tags: Education & schools | Category: Commentary | Leave a comment

My thoughts on Nevada valedictory

I’m going to add my comments here, rather than clutter up the previous post.

In reading over McComb’s speech a few times, I can see why the school officials cut her mike when they did. Right there in paragraph 6, McComb’s subject veers sharply from relatively generic “high-school-girl-grows-up” commentary right into Christian theology, by referring to the Crucifixion and quoting John 10:10. Until that point, her text was more generally about God and how accepting Him filled a gaping hole in her soul. Had she left out reference to Christ’s self-sacrifice, the other religious content — even the quote from Jeremiah — probably would have passed muster.

Well, it would have if I had been the one vetting her speech, anyway.

While I have my doubts whether McComb did the right thing by defying school officials after agreeing to their editorial control, in some ways she had a good point. The school officials were being overly sensitive in deleting most of the religious references. On the other hand, they probably exercised some good judgment in preventing McComb from espousing definitively Christian theology.
In my high school on Long Island, where there was (and probably still is) a sizable Jewish population, making specific reference to Christ dying on the cross for our sins would have alienated, and angered, a fair number of the students and their families at graduation. Our community was too pluralistic (Protestants, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Jews) for anyone in our class to even consider making such potentially offensive references in a public speech, anyway.
I can’t be sure, but judging from this site’s data, the populace of Henderson is primarily Christian. Presumably, most of the folks there would share McComb’s beliefs and would find nothing at all offensive in the reference to the Passion of Christ. She herself probably never gave a thought toward respecting other religious believers in the audience.

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June 27th, 2006 | Tags: Education & schools | Category: Commentary | Comments (2)