Last week, the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom complimented Mohave Community College—both on this blog and in a press release—for continuing to allow prayers at the pinning ceremony for its nursing program.  MCC had eliminated the prayers but then opted to allow them to continue after receiving a letter from ADF.  Yet in Inside Higher Ed today, President Michael Kearns claims MCC never eliminated prayers from the ceremony and that ADF exaggerated the impact of its letter.  While Inside Higher Ed has always been among the most reputable and professional sources for news on higher education issues, we wish that they would have contacted us before running their story on this case.  But as Paul Harvey would say, it is now time for “the rest of the story,” the part that President Kearns left out of his remarks.

In mid-January, the Commencement Committee at MCC issued its “Pinning Ceremony Protocol.”  Contrary to President Kearns’ statement, it does not list the prayers as optional.  Rather, it strikes them out completely, eliminating them from the ceremony.  In her cover e-mail, Tracy Gift explained that the prayers prompted “a lot of discussion” on the Committee.  However, in the end, the Committee decided that “church and state should remain separate,” and it based this conclusion on some un-cited “legal preceden[t].”

In announcing this decision to the nursing faculty, Linda Reisdorph, the Director of Nursing at MCC, concurred that eliminating the prayers was the wise course of action.  She was “personally upset over the benediction,” and she noted that past nursing classes had chosen whether or not to pray.  But she agreed with the decision to remove the prayers, saying that “it is probably not an issue to argue over as we will lose.”  And she remarked that removing the prayers would alleviate other administrative concerns.

President Kearns may say that the prayers always remained an optional part of the program, but the documents simply do not bear this out.  And just days before the pinning ceremony, Velta Soto—one of the student speakers for the pinning ceremony—did not know the prayers were part of the program or whether she would even be allowed to include religious references in her remarks.

While we wish that Inside Higher Ed had contacted us regarding this story, it is more disappointing that President Kearns would return our compliments with such blatant misrepresentations.  But President Kearns is simply wrong on all points in his remarks to Inside Higher Ed.  MCC officials explicitly eliminated the prayers, did not make them optional, and justified this decision citing the “separation of church and state.”  Only after receiving our letter did MCC decide to continue to allow the prayers as part of the pinning ceremony.  In allowing the prayers, President Kearns made the right decision—to respect the religious freedoms protected by the First Amendment.  Sadly, his one shining moment was all too brief.