limited speech
...ayer in public schools, it summarizes some of the years that prayer in public schools, got banned. Starting in 1992 when prayer enforced by a teacher or faculty member at graduations got banned. Teachers and faculty members were not allowed to pray at graduation ceremonies because it was an “unconstitutional establishment of religion.” Though supporters found ways to pray at graduation ceremonies and say that it was a student led prayer, people still took offence to it and wanted prayer at graduations out of school in general, not caring who said it. In 1993, a court session put a hold on a ruling on the issue and all prayers at public school graduations. “The justices later set aside a federal appeals court ruling upholding a policy on student-led-prayer at graduation and asked the lower court to reconsider its ruling in light of Santa Fe. At issue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, was the graduation-prayer policy of the Duval County, Fla., district.” Recently in May of 2001, their was a court ruling on prayer at graduation ceremonies in public schools, and this ruling “means that graduation-message policies patterned on Duval County's are legal throughout the 11th Circuit, which covers Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. But opponents of the policy have said they will appeal to the Supreme Court” (Walsh, “Law Update”). This ruling only covers three states out of fifty and means that every other school in the United States, is not allowed to have prayer at graduation ceremonies. Going into my senior year of high school, I pretty much knew who the Valedictorian would be, just by seeing who stood out above the rest of the student body in grades. This person just happened to be the president of a Christian Club that I was in on campus. A few months in advance to the graduation, she proposed her speech to the few us in the Club. We all thought the speech was great, but the teacher who allowed us to use his classroom, reminded her that there could be no prayer in the speech. Though Christy, the Valedictorian, only said a brief prayer at the end of her speech, to wish everyone the best of luck in life to come, soon found out that she had to eliminate the prayer from her speech. Although it was not such a big deal to other students and even to her, I took it personally. I felt that if she wanted to say a prayer wishing everyone the best of luck, that she could. I went to the principle to ask if what the teacher said was true, and she glanced at me and commented “where have you been?” At first I was confused and then she sat my down and told me that there was a law that passed in 1993 that there could be no prayer in a graduation ceremony. The shock that I felt that day has never been repeated, I have never felt the way I did that day, since. I ju...