Tag Archives: Graduation

Student Defies School To Share Christian Faith

A student at California’s Brawley Union High School defied the school’s leadership during his graduation ceremony speech.

The school’s officials had told Brooks Hamby, the class salutatorian, he would not be allowed to make any reference to his Christian faith during his speech.  He submitted his speech three times to the school only to have it rejected over issues of faith.

“In coming before you today, I presented three drafts of my speech, all of them denied on account of my desire to share with you my personal thoughts and inspiration to you: my Christian faith,” Hamby said in his speech.  “No man or woman has ever truly succeeded or been fulfilled on the account of living for others and not standing on what they knew in their heart was right or good.”

Hamby also quoted Matthew 5:13:  “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

Hamby has been a leader for the school’s mock-trial team and also a U.S. Senate page.

Virginia High School Graduates Defy ACLU

Graduates of a Virginia high school thumbed their nose at the demands of the ACLU that a song sung at graduations since 1940 be banned because it references God.

Students at Thomas Walker High School in Ewing, Virginia locked arms after receiving their diplomas and sang “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.”  The song has been sung during graduation since the school’s 1940 founding.

The ACLU had sent a threatening e-mail to school officials saying that students should be banned from singing the song, even at their own initiation, because the song makes a reference to God.

ACLU lawyer Rebecca Glenberg, in addition to wanting to remove any references to God from the graduation ceremony, also objected to a plaque of the Ten Commandments being displayed in a school hallway.  The administration responded to the anti-Christianist demand by removing the plaque and eliminating the song from the ceremony.

The students, however, chose to revolt and refused to let the ACLU deny them their Constitutional right to express their faith.

The students also rose and recited the Lord’s Prayer at the invocation because it had also been removed from the ceremony.

Anti-Christianists Enraged Over Principal’s Graduation Speech

Anti-Christianists are outraged that a principal of a Missouri high school spoke about the history of God in public life during his address to graduates.

Kevin Lowery, principal of Lebanon High School, told the graduates during a May 23rd commencement to remember that “God is still important” after the students were prohibited from praying at the event.

“In one of the most famous sentences in American History, taken from our Declaration of Independence, reads, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,’” Lowery said in opening the gathering. “This passage has come to represent a moral standard to which the United States should always strive.  And even though God is reflected in the very fabric of our nation, we are told that it is inappropriate and even illegal to mention God at high school graduations, let alone say a prayer.”

Lowery then asked those in the room to hold a minute of silence.

“[J]ust in case you’re interested, during my moment of silence, I gave thanks to God for these great students, their parents, their teachers, and for this community,” he said after the moment of silence, causing the room to erupt in applause.

“Oh, I’m not finished,” he continued. “I asked God to protect these students as they go their separate ways into the world. I asked God to avail Himself in every possible way.  I asked God to watch over them, to protect them, and to bless them with self-fulfillment, with compassion, inner peace, and personal prosperity. Thank you for indulging the thoughts I had during my moment of silence. And yes, God is still important, and let us not ever forget it.”

The school district has reported that anti-Christianists have sent angry messages to the school after news reports of the principal’s comments reached the internet.  The complaints have come from people who do not live in the community and did not attend the ceremony.

High School Award Ceremony Features Profanity; Sex Toys

A teacher for the drama program at Bellingham Washington High School has issued a formal apology after the awards ceremony for the program included profanity, a box of sex toys and even jokes about pedophile priests.

Teri Grimes, a teacher of over 30 years who is scheduled to retire at the end of this school year, reportedly used profanity and told a joke about a priest wanting sex with children.

A parent in the audience sent an e-mail to KOMO television about the events that occurred at the ceremony in the school’s auditorium.  The woman was there with her 17-year-old daughter who will graduate on June 6th.  The television station kept the parent and child’s names secret until after graduation.

The event featured sexually oriented awards, including giving a sex toy to the boy who voted as the “horniest stud.”

“I deeply apologize for some very inappropriate comments and actions made during our drama students’ end-of-the-year awards ceremony,” Grimes wrote in her apology.  “This is not representative of our students who take such great pride in their school and respect one another. Much of the evening was a great celebration of their work. However, as a teacher and the club’s leader, I take full responsibility and am extremely sorry.”

Students Protest Making Prayer Optional At Graduation

A number of residents and students protested at the offices of the Ector County (Texas) Independent School District after officials said they would be making prayer in the graduation ceremony optional.

High school students in the district had voted to have prayer as part of the ceremony but the administrators completely ignored their wishes in scheduling an “opening” and “closing” delivered by students instead of an invocation and benediction.  The students would not be chosen by the graduating seniors or by academic achievement but entirely by random selection.

The move came because the anti-Christian group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State threatened to sue the school if they allowed the students to follow through on their vote to have a prayer included in the event.

Students held up signs saying “We are a democracy; we voted to pray” and “As Americans, we have the freedom to pray.”

School board member Doyle Woodall said that the board did not want to take the action they did but that it was forced upon them by anti-Christianists using the courts to force their will on the majority.

Legendary West Virginia Coach Banned From Graduation

A legendary West Virginia high school football coach has been banned from speaking at graduation because a few people objected to his references to God in last year’s speech.

Despite an overwhelming majority of students, parents and faculty wanting Leon McCoy to speak at the 2014 graduation of Winfield High School, he was told he would not be welcomed back because a few people didn’t want to be exposed to someone mentioning God.

“There were complaints on me allowing prayer and so forth. Unfortunately, the law says we can’t do that,” school principal Bruce McGrew told the Charleston Daily Mail. “I don’t like it and by no means agree with it. … It’s a difficult situation when I am forced to do something as part of my job.”

McCoy said he understands the decision.  He said that in the past Christians were allowed to speak in public with their views but now laws keep them from being able to share their beliefs.

Several students and parents plan to protest graduation, saying that a handful of anti-Christianists should not be able to dictate a ceremony for everyone else.

Arizona Students Refuse To Remove Prayer From Graduation

Despite an administrator’s attempt to get prayer removed from the Pima Unified School District’s graduation, students made sure that God was given praise during the event.

Superintendent Sean Rickert had ordered the removal of prayer from the graduation event because he wanted to make sure he wasn’t violating the rights of any student who didn’t want to participate in or hear a prayer at the event.  He said that he made the decision on his own without any threats of legal action against the school.

Community members and students were outraged at Rickert’s actions, and when the Superintendent and other school officials refused to change their mind on the matter, students took the matter into their own hands.

Not only did students present prayers as part of the ceremony, many graduates made a silent protest by handing a marble to the superintendent as they graduated, an indication they believed he had “lost his marbles” with his actions.

“My class wanted God in our graduation and we weren’t going to take no for an answer,” said Esperanza Gonzalez, one of the students who prayed at the event.  “The world keeps saying ‘no to God, no to God’ unless you’re in prison, so we said yes to God because He has helped us throughout our entire high school career.”