MISSION VIEJO : Return of Pledge Urged at College

Ned Doffoney, president of Saddleback College, is urging student government leaders to reinstate the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag at their weekly meetings.

Doffoney issued a statement Wednesday saying, in part: “The college, as a publicly supported educational institution, has a responsibility to support and encourage valuable American institutions like the Pledge of Allegiance.”

The Associated Student Government voted in January to drop the pledge from its meeting agenda. Peyvand Saadatifard, a student government member, said that some students don’t believe in God, and omitting the pledge was an effort to be sensitive to diversity.

“The pledge is symbolic to different people in different ways,” Saadatifard said.

George Key, a San Clemente resident and military veteran of two wars, had threatened to withhold a $500 scholarship that Post 7142 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars awards to a student each year unless the pledge was restored.

Key, a 70-year-old great-grandson of Francis Scott Key, said Thursday that he had received dozens of calls supporting his position. “The Pledge of Allegiance is something that was earned by a lot of men who died for our country,” Key said.

Saadatifard said that procedural rules don’t allow the student government to reconsider the issue until the beginning of the next session, in the fall.