<p>
It seems people are frothing at the mouth on both sides - this student is among those frothing at the mouth over the fact that the school board chose to remove prayer from the ceremony. His froth came out in the form of a prayer.</p>
<p>It is clear the school board doesn’t really agree with their own decision, and only did it out of expedience, because there will be no punishment. I wonder what they will do next year if another student chooses to deliver an unapproved speech (and if they have ever had it happen in the past, what they did then).</p>
<p>The issue, in terms of consequences, isn’t that this student did something that may have been unconstitutional - that’s irrelevant. What is relevant is that he disagreed with a new policy, and chose graduation as the place to protest. In doing so, he broke the rules, and should face the consequences. Because there will be no consequences, the message is given that it’s OK to submit a speech for approval, and then deliver a different speech.</p>
<p>People are calling him courageous, but I can’t agree. What did he risk? He didn’t care if a handful of people attending the ceremony didn’t like what he was doing - or maybe he did, and wanted to incite them. Courage would have been delivering that speech in a country where Christianity is banned, knowing there would be serious consequences.</p>
<p>What bothers me more at this point is that said student now believes that “God used him to deliver his message.”</p>