A few teen
girls at South Portland High School in Maine are facing harsh criticism
for giving their fellow students the option to abstain from reciting the
Pledge of Allegiance.
Senior
Class President Lily SanGiovanni started adding the words "if you'd
like to" when asking her peers to join her in promising their loyalty to
the nation, according to local media.
SanGiovanni,
Senior Class Vice President Morrigan Turner, and their friend Gaby
Ferrell say they started to think seriously about the topic after some
teachers made students feel uncomfortable for not conforming, the Bangor Daily News reported.
They discovered that state law requires
schools to allow every student to have the opportunity to recite the
Pledge of Allegiance but “may not require a student to recite the Pledge
of Allegiance.”
"We are not
doing this because we hate America or anything. We are really doing this
because we understand there are people who choose to say the pledge and
it means a lot to them and for others it doesn't," SanGiovanni told WCSH.
The
young women want people to be free to think about what the pledge means
to them and decide for themselves whether they want to participate.
Not everyone agrees.
Critics
reportedly derided the girls on social media and sent emails to the
school questioning the phrase’s inclusion in the morning announcements.
"There
were some people saying we should go to Syria or Russia or Afghanistan
and that will change us. It’s really hard to hear that coming from your
community," Turner told the local paper.
Principal
Ryan Caron told the NBC affiliate that he asked SanGiovanni to stop
saying, "if you'd like to," because of school procedure, not outside
pressure.
The girls, he said, would need to present their plan to say those words before the school board for approval.
"The
fact that I was asked to take away the 'If you would like
to,'" SanGiovanni said, "I felt like they were asking me to take away
the law."
***
The shear audacity!
How dare those kids obey the law!
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