Prayer at Buena High Graduation Prompts Dissent : Ventura: Former students believe their constitutional rights were violated by the unannounced benediction. Principal says the nondenominational speech was legal.

Saying that their constitutional rights have been violated, two recent Buena High School graduates are organizing a protest about a prayer that was read at their graduation ceremony without their consent.

The prayer, which invoked a “father” but made no reference to God, was not on the written program for the graduation ceremony held on the Buena High quad in Ventura on Thursday.

And graduates Amber Mills and Amy Israel both said they were caught by surprise when one of their classmates mounted the stage and urged the audience to bow their heads for a benediction.

“I was kind of in shock,” the 18-year-old Mills said. “I don’t have a problem with people being religious. But when it’s imposed on other people, and I really feel this was imposed on our graduating class, I just don’t think that’s right. I think its an imposition on my right to believe as I want to.”

Following the ceremony, Mills and Israel asked other classmates if they had also been upset.

The two graduates and one of their classmates have made an appointment with Buena High Principal Jaime Castellanos to voice their complaint. And they said they have found at least six additional recent graduates who were offended by the prayer.

“I just didn’t feel it was right,” graduate Danny Slaton said about the prayer.

But Castellanos said Monday that he will explain to the students Wednesday that the prayer was legal.

A ruling in 1993 by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals allows such worship if it is initiated by students and approved by a majority of their classmates. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the appeals court decision.

“They have a right to do it,” Castellanos said. “My hands are tied legally.”

He said the school had a prayer at its graduation last year that had also been initiated by students.

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This year, students came to his office on the day before with a petition signed by about 250 of their fellow seniors, more than half of the class of about 450. The petition asked for a prayer at their commencement ceremony. It did not specify the prayer’s language.

Although the 1993 appeals court case cleared the way for non-sectarian prayers, other court cases are pending about whether such student-initiated prayers may be overtly religious.

In the Ventura Unified School District, Castellanos said, officials have decided only to allow student prayers without words tied to any particular religion.

The principal said he gave the students precise instructions about words they could and could not use in the prayer. While the words “God” and “Jesus” are forbidden, “father” is allowed.

“Whether you call him father or mother, I don’t see that in my opinion as favoring one religion over another,” Castellanos said.

But Mills and Israel said the word “father” contributed to the overall Christian tenor of the prayer.

Both girls said they come from non-religious families.

“They said it was nondenominational,” Israel said. “But what about Buddhism? What about Hinduism? What about those religions where ‘our father’ doesn’t apply?”

Although Israel said she knew petitions were being passed during graduation week, she had expected seniors would have an opportunity to vote on whether there would be a prayer.

Without a vote, she said it was impossible to know if all the signatures were valid.

But Erin Weir, who wrote the prayer and who was one of six seniors who passed petitions, said gathering signatures was easier than holding a formal vote.

Weir said she wrote the prayer to appeal to people with a wide range of beliefs.

But she and other students who supported the benediction said it had been important to them to offer a prayer at their high school graduation.

“It wasn’t to stand militantly (and say,) ‘We’re going to force this down your throats,’ ” said 18-year-old Damon Delillo, a former president of the school’s Bible club who read the prayer at the commencement. “It was a declaration of our hope and of God’s guidance all through high school and it was just kind of a prayer that God would continue to do this all through our lives.”

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Both Mills and Israel emphasized that they did not want to finish high school on a bad note; they said they liked Buena, its principal and teachers.

Their purpose in meeting with Castellanos, they said, is to ask if there is some way to prevent similar prayers at future graduations.

But Castellanos said his only power is to review the wording in prayers put forward by students. And even that is difficult.

“It’s a tricky area,” he said. “Where do you draw the line?”

Words of Benediction

Text of the prayer delivered at the Buena High graduation June 16:

Father we come before you. We thank you for guiding our paths daily, for putting important people in our lives to help us along the way.

We know we need you to see us through the rest of our lives.

And we thank you that we are never far from your love.

That every day of our lives is ordained by you.

Knowing that you are the preserver of men and guide our footsteps, we thank you.

We ask that your loving hand would be there to hold us and to carry us throughout the rest of our lives.

We ask that we would see clearly the way to abounding life.

As we bestow our lives into your guidance and direction.

Please show us your goodness, mercy and compassion.

Amen.