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Church/State Separation In Indiana – At Least One Student Gets It

(HT to Phil at Bad Astronomy.)

It's graduation season, and that means that thousands of schools around the country will be holding ceremonies at which class presidents, valedictorians, administrators, and special guests will be delivering speeches to sizable captive audiences.

Depending on how closely school officials pre-screen the speeches given by students, they can range from cloyingly nostalgic to scathingly harsh.  

Eric Workman's valedictory speech (the link is to the full text) at Greenwood Community High School in Greenwood, Indiana is closer to the harsh end of the spectrum.

Some background:

Last fall, the school administration called for a vote by students to decide whether the graduation ceremony would include a school-sanctioned prayer.  Apparently the vote was overall in favor, despite the fact that such an official prayer is in crystal clear violation of the First Amendment.

Workman, recognizing this turn of events as the epic fail that it was, connected with the ACLU of Indiana, who filed suit on his behalf to stop the prayer, resulting in a ruling on 30 April to do just that.

What makes this situation more interesting than most is that Workman is a self-described Christian, and his actions apparently put him at odds with many of his classmates.  (Read his speech.  It's very well-written, if perhaps a bit snarky in a couple of places.)

Workman gets what a lot of people don't - that the First Amendment protects all religions by sanctioning none.  The Greenwood Community School Corporation, by endorsing a prayer at graduation, is implicitly sanctioning a specific religion in blatant disregard of the Constitution.

Note that students are always free to pray if they wish - nothing in the First Amendment precludes that.  Indeed, the speech delivered by the class president was sectarian in tone, but it was her speech, not the school's, and she was perfectly within her rights to give it. 

It isn't that difficult of a concept - the government (which includes school boards) needs to remain neutral with regard to religion.  That protects everyone's right to worship (or not) as they see fit.  There's no provision in the First Amendment to carve out exceptions based on the local majority religion, which is what the GCSC appeared to be doing.  Workman, quoting Thomas Jefferson, understands that. 

A lot of adults could learn something from him. 

-Jay

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