A proposal to eliminate a prayer at the campus-wide graduation ceremony will be brought before the University Senate next month.
The issue, touching on the controversial issue of the separation of church and state, was originally raised in 2005 and was considered by the Senate last year, but has never actually been put up for a vote.
After a contentious debate yesterday in the Senate Executive Committee – the Senate’s most powerful – over whether the issue merits a vote or should be passed directly to university President Dan Mote, the committee decided the full Senate should vote on the issue. Senate officials are predicting a controversial and lengthy discussion, they said.
“For every 100 people, you’re going to have 98 different opinions on this,” said Office of Information Technology Policy and Planning Director Willie Brown, who chairs the committee that drafted the recommendation. “But ultimately, I would rather face the music and bring this to a Senate vote.”
The bill calls for the elimination of a prayer invocation at the university’s commencement, which is crafted and presented on a rotating basis by each of the university’s 14 chaplains, who are instructed to make it as “inclusive as possible.”
Last year, a proposal was brought before the executive committee that would substitute the ritual two-minute prayer with a one-minute nondenominational invocation, given jointly by the university chaplains, followed by a minute of silence. But this proposal was sidelined until the senate committee that drafted the proposal researched the matter more fully and gave a more concrete proposal.
“The idea of a moment of silence was considered a cop out,” Brown said. “We were told we should attack this head-on or not touch it at all.”
Though the Supreme Court has explicitly outlawed the use of prayer at public K-12 schools, there is no clear stance from the Supreme Court regarding public institutions of higher education. Past federal court rulings on the issue have depended heavily on the context of the situation.
Brown noted that students have the choice to attend or not attend the commencement ceremony, and therefore, it can be argued that the prayer is not being forced upon anyone. But the report notes that none of the university’s peer institutions – University of California, Berkeley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Michigan, University of North Carolina and UCLA – have prayer at their graduation ceremonies.
Some said the polarizing nature of the issue would create such a fuss that it might obstruct the issue at hand.
“This is an issue that will go nowhere in the Senate,” Senate Chair Ken Holum said. “It will be endlessly controversial.”
Holum said that Mote was seeking counsel on the issue from the executive committee, and as such, felt the proposal should not be brought to the Senate for a vote.
“This is not a policy proposal,” Holum said. “The president’s office sets the agenda for commencement, and the president has simply asked us for advice.”
But many members of the executive committee disagreed, noting that since the proposal had been put through the senate committee process and was originally brought up by a university senator, it should be a matter of policy given to the Senate general body to vote on.
“If we bring this to the Senate floor, of course it will be controversial,” University Senate Director Reka Montfort said. “But isn’t that the point of shared governance?”
When the senate considered the issue last year, Mote said there were “ways to convey the spirit of the moment without crossing the line” and that “it can be cloudy about what is denominational and what’s not.”
While the report advocates having no invocation is the best way to “be more sensitive to believers and non-believers,” religious student leaders say having a prayer at graduation enhances the occasion for many students and their families.
“I’m going to be graduating in December and I already know I’m going to cry,” senior physical sciences major Jade Williams said. “And having prayer there will just remind me that I’m there because God brought me to this place where I’ve accomplished so much.”
But Williams, who is a member of the Baptist Campus Ministry, added that it would not be a disservice to the religious community if there were no religious invocation at the ceremony, and would support its omission if it made it more enjoyable for everybody regardless of their beliefs.
“As much as I want to say God exists and we should include Him in the ceremony, I know not everyone believes that,” she said. “That should be taken into consideration.”
Brown said the proposal was intended to be as inclusive as possible by eliminating what has been perceived to be too scriptural for some, while not imposing any alternative.
“This is a new take on an old issue,” Brown said. “We’re talking about the complete removal of prayer at commencement. … There is no right, no wrong, no good, no bad.”
If the Senate votes to approve the proposal on April 6, the invocation will be eliminated from the all-campus commencement ceremony, but individual colleges will still be able to make decisions regarding their own ceremonies.
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