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Religion See other Religion Articles Title: Student protests district’s rejection of motto (Ruled unsuitible because it is derived from the Bible) BLUE RIVER — Some senior class members at 90-student McKenzie High School thought they’d spotted a great class motto in a Bible verse quoted at the August funeral of a classmate killed in an all-terrain vehicle accident. But, even after the students deleted references to God, McKenzie School District officials rejected as too religious the motto: “They that believe shall mount up with wings as eagles.” Class member Brianna Rux, 17, disagreed with the decision and wrote a guest opinion in Friday’s Register-Guard protesting it. In it, she said the verse seemed particularly fitting, given that class members have pulled together to rise above their grief and McKenzie High’s sports teams are known as “The Eagles.” “Ourselves being Eagles, it seemed a good way to describe who we are that no matter what we believe in, we can overcome,” she said Friday. She said the entire Bible verse — “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles” — was read at the memorial service for Ryan Snapp. Snapp died Aug. 10 after hitting a tree in the alcohol-related crash. “We modified it to take out anything that could be declared religious or would offend anyone in any way,” she said. But even with the changes, the verse was recognizable as scriptural, McKenzie Superintendent Sally Storm said. “In fact, we heard about it from the owner of the company that was going to publish our graduation announcements,” she said. “He called our office and told a secretary that they wanted to use a Bible verse.” Storm said she called Bruce Zagar, the school district’s attorney, to get a legal opinion on the matter. “I started to run it past him and he immediately said, ‘That’s Isaiah 40:31,’41;” she said. “My duty is to follow the law — in this case the U.S. Constitution, which doesn’t allow public schools to either interfere with the practice of religion or establish a religious practice.” Zagar, reached Friday afternoon, said simply omitting “the Lord” from the verse “doesn’t alter where its origin is: the Old Testament, reflecting a Judeo-Christian background.” In a formal opinion, he advised the district that both the U.S. and Oregon constitutions “prevent any public entity from taking any action which establishes, sponsors, supports or otherwise condones a particular religion or religious belief.” Refusing to allow use of the verse doesn’t amount to interference with Judeo-Christian religious practice, he added, because it does not prevent students as individuals from exercising their religious beliefs. McKenzie High School student body president Casey King said Friday that most members of the senior class have accepted the decision. The class adopted a replacement motto, he said: “Nothing we do changes the past; everything we do changes the future.” Rux acknowledged the new slogan, but said she remains frustrated that school officials won’t even allow her to display the old one as a sign in the school’s gymnasium. “They say it’s a black-and-white issue, but it’s not,” she said. “There’s a whole gray area. What’s the difference between this and our choir singing about Moses or our English class getting ready to read ‘The Poisonwood Bible,’ a story about missionaries in Africa?” But Zagar said displaying the sign at school would raise the same problem as publishing the verse on graduation announcements: It would imply McKenzie’s sponsorship of a particular religious practice, something a public school cannot do as an agent of the government. Storm said she told Rux that the verse would be “very appropriate” at a baccalaureate service — a privately sponsored religious ceremony organized by students and parents in some communities to mark the high school graduation milestone. She added that she and other school officials have tried to make the controversy an education in constitutional law. “We tried to have them learn from this,” she said. “We appreciate their passion.”
Poster Comment: This is rediculous, let the kids decide what motto they want.
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#2. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
How docile we have become.
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