City Asks Saddleback Students to Set Better Example

Saying that student leaders at Saddleback College are not setting the right example, the City Council this week passed a resolution urging them to reinstate the Pledge of Allegiance at all their public meetings.

The action came just two weeks after a similar resolution was passed by San Juan Capistrano’s City Council.

“Many people are looking to your leadership,” San Clemente Councilman Patrick M. Ahle told student leaders. “What type of example are you going to set? What values, what morals . . . are you going to project to all these people?”

The Associated Student Government last year discontinued the practice of reciting the pledge at its executive cabinet meetings. Student leaders upheld that policy last month, prompting some local military veterans and residents to protest the decision.

Nick Grewal, vice president of the ASG, said at Wednesday’s City Council meeting that, though the salute is not on the agenda for executive cabinet sessions, anyone who wants to say the pledge may do so during public comments at the start of all meetings.

“It’s really not the responsibility of cities to tell Saddleback governance groups how to run their meetings,” Grewal said, adding that opening sessions of the judicial and senate branches of student government begin with the pledge. “This is purely an internal issue.”

Besides requesting that the pledge be reinstated, the resolution calls for elected state officials to take note of the issue during the state budget process.