Tough call

[Cartoonist]

I'm not sure which side to take. I oppose censorship, but what was the school's policy, and did the student know it?

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/05/23/valedictorian-speech-censor-jesus/

SCIOTA, IL (CBS Local) – An Illinois high school valedictorian has hired a lawyer after claiming that school officials demanded he remove all religious references from his graduation speech.

Sam Blackledge was set to deliver the speech at West Prairie High School on May 19. According to the 18-year-old, school administrators informed him that he needed to take out anything that mentioned God and Jesus minutes before Blackledge was scheduled to go on stage.

“It was terrible. I felt like I wanted to cry,” the valedictorian said, via The Kansas City Star. “Christ is the only reason I was a valedictorian. He’s the reason I got that 4.0. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be up there. I was giving him the credit for that.”

[msongs]

1. to be fair would they take out santa claus aas the reason for the kid's degree?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. Without actually seeing the speech itself, it's impossible to comment.

However, this kid attended a public high school Clearly the school did not make the separation of church and state thing sufficiently clear to him.

[Voltaire2]

4. Does not apply in this case.

[Mariana]

6. Yeah, really have to see the speech.

If he was planning to give a sermon, that's not appropriate.

[Voltaire2]

3. As an individual and not a school official he should

have been free to utter whatever idiocy he wanted.

[NeoGreen]

5. Agreed, with the caveat that...

...up to the point where school officials help print and pass out hymnals.

[yallerdawg]

11. "Free to utter whatever idiocy he wanted."

Now, a progressive Christian would look at this as a banal inoffensive comment, right?

Not mocking derisive dismissiveness, right?

Not an example you were asking for, right?

No smilies so you know I'm really serious, right?

[Mariana]

12. "Free to utter whatever idiocy he wanted"

doesn't necessarily apply only to religious idiocy.

Do you think it's appropriate for a student to preach at a graduation ceremony?

[Voltaire2]

17. I didn't mention religion.

I stated that he should have been free to utter any idiocy he wanted.

Do you disagree?

[yallerdawg]

18. Religion group on a religion thread?

Free to dissemble, for sure!

[Voltaire2]

20. The issue is free speech.

Do you disagree that he should be allowed to utter any idiocy he chooses?

[Major Nikon]

19. As a progressive unaffiliated apatheist I take offense to your offense

If your faith can’t tolerate someone else dismissing your imaginary friend, you may wish to consider how strong it was to begin with.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

14. Being it's a speech at a graduation, things get a little different (Lee v Weisman)

It's the school's microphone so they need to make sure that they aren't crossing the line of separation.

Having not read the speech, I'm not sure. If he just talks about religion and God, then he should have been OK. If he is prothelytizing, then they have the right (and I would argue obligation) to not let him. Students don't really have the option to not attend their graduation and shouldn't be forced to have to listen to that.

[Voltaire2]

21. I disagree with that decision.

The kid is not a school official, he is a student who won an award, and the 'prize' is he gets to speak at the graduation.

[MineralMan]

7. Personally, I think student addresses at graduations

do not represent anything official on the part of government. So, I wouldn't care if a valedictorian had religious references in his speech. Let the student say whatever he or she wishes.

The bottom line is that valedictory speeches at high school graduations are forgotten almost before they are spoken. They don't matter to anyone except the kid who earned that honor.

Prohibiting religious references from such speeches is, I think, an overreach by the school in interpreting the separation rules. Of course, the kid's wrong. It was his brain and work that resulted in his being the valedictorian. But, I think he should say whatever he wants to say.

I was valedictorian at my high school, back in 1963. Back then, I had to submit my planned remarks a week in advance for approval by the school. Since I was the official class clown and smartass, I guess they wanted to make sure I didn't pull another of my famous pranks. I didn't. The speech was the usual vanilla speech, which nobody remembered for more than a minute. I knew better than to prank the commencement exercise, although it was very tempting.

[Act_of_Reparation]

8. I mostly agree, but I think there are some important considerations.

The valedictorian and salutatorian aren't speaking for anyone but themselves, that's true. But their audience is captive by the authority of the school, and it could be argued that in delivering a religious speech, the school is in effect using its authority to subject the student body to proslytizing.

[MineralMan]

9. Well, the answer to that is for the school to be hands off on those

speeches, altogether, I think. This has been an issue for some time, and it's a conflict that exists within the 1st Amendment. My opinion has always been that if you ask the best student in the graduating class to give a speech, you should just let the student give his or her own speech and not worry about its content. The student should be able to exercise that part of the 1st Amendment rights.

The school itself is constrained from religious expression at that event, of course, but nobody is harmed by a kid giving a speech composed by that student. The audience will simply ignore the whole thing, anyhow. Truly.

I can't even remember exactly what was in my valedictory speech. I thanked a couple of excellent teachers, made some laudatory comments about the excellent school system in my small town (it was, too), and said some vanilla, naive words about our "bright future." Then, I saluted the Hispanic students (about 33%) in Spanish, and sat the heck down. The stupid ceremony went on too long already, anyhow.

[trotsky]

10. Correct, that's where it gets a little hazy.

The court has ruled announcers at football games can't lead prayers for that reason. No using government resources to promote a religious message, particularly to a captive audience.

But for all the Christians who are going to latch on to this story and scream about religious persecution, I would love to have each and every one of them be asked what their position would be if the student was a Muslim.

These rules protect EVERYONE.

[Mariana]

13. We have a pretty good idea of what would happen

if the student was a Muslim, or any non-Christian. Audience members who are the kind that squawk about persecution of Christians would most likely be outraged and get up and walk out, and the non-Christian student would receive death threats.

[MineralMan]

16. Their answer would be: "But that's different."

That's always the answer to such questions. Of course, in reality, they'd scream bloody murder if that were the case.

Religious persecution, in their minds, only exists when it applies to Christians. Anyone else's religion deserves persecution, and they'll be happy to do the persecuting. If it ain't Christian, it ain't really religion, innit?

[marylandblue]

22. Well if you had pranked them anyway, everyone would remember

[MineralMan]

23. Too easy, though. Yes, I could have given a speech

that would have shocked the audience there. That would have been no problem. In 1963, we were just getting into the Vietnam war. The civil rights movement was gathering steam. The small town I lived in had a real problem with accepting that a third of its population was Hispanic. There were some horrid teachers in the system, including one who had just told me the evening before Graduation Day that I "would never amount to anything." The football coach at that school was a sadist.

Yes, I could have pranked the ceremony with all that stuff. But, my pranks were never destructive, even if they were often disruptive. So, I settled on a vanilla speech, but wound it up with a closing in Spanish as a nod to my Hispanic friends. As it was, I got scolded by the school's superintendent the next day for speaking Spanish in my speech. I just laughed at him and showed him my diploma.

[Iggo]

15. "...minutes before Blackledge was scheduled to go on stage."

That's the part that hurts, and I feel for the kid.