What happened to ban on sacred music?

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio will investigate why a 2002 ban on using religious music at graduation ceremonies quietly disappeared from the Columbus City School Board’s policy manual two years ago. The board had agreed to the ban in a lawsuit settlement with the ACLU.

“We’re looking into it,” said Mike Brickner, senior policy director of ACLU Ohio. “We want to verify what happened to the (policy) change and settlement agreement.

“If we believe that the

settlement has been violated, or that Columbus City Schools has started to use religious music, certainly we will talk to them.”

Michael Vander Does, who said he was instrumental in bringing about the ACLU lawsuit, contacted the group again Thursday after learning in The Dispatch that the school board had “inadvertently” dropped the ban during a board policy rewrite two years ago. Vander Does, a Clintonville resident, said he was shocked that the district revoked a policy created as part of an out-of-court settlement.

“Inadvertently doesn’t mean you’re not in violation,” said Vander Does, who helped launch the suit after witnessing Christian music performances at his daughter’s high school graduation from Fort Hayes Arts and Academic High School almost two decades ago. “You just don’t leave stuff like that out.”

The ACLU lawsuit was based on a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision that banned prayers from high school graduations. The district said at the time that it didn’t concede that the songs constituted prayers. But the school board ended the suit anyway when it agreed to approve the policy banning religious-themed songs at graduation ceremonies and setting guidelines on religious music at other events and classes.

The district worked with a consultant, Neola, to update board policies, district spokesman Scott Varner

said. The district isn’t aware that any religious songs were used in graduation ceremonies in the two years since the policy was deleted, Varner said.

“It was inadvertent,” Varner said. “It wasn’t the case that it was intentionally left out.”

As the school board on Wednesday debated a move to reinstate the music policy, board member W. Shawna Gibbs and Vice President Michael Cole asked whether there was any way to allow gospel music back into graduations. Cole asked if the district could make it legal by stating that graduations were also “concerts” and Gibbs asked for a legal analysis of the prohibition.

“So no gospel choirs can perform at graduation?” Gibbs asked.

“It doesn’t prohibit a gospel choir from performing music,” but does govern what they can sing, replied Larry Braverman, the district’s legal counsel. The rule was enacted because people of different religions “would have to stay there and listen to it or skip the graduation ceremony.”

Gibbs responded that African-American culture involves singing “spirituals” and asked if the policy means “they wouldn’t be allowed to do that then as part of their graduation?”

Such graduation performances “allow students to express their creativeness,” Cole said.

The deletion happened because the board was using a template of policies from Neola, the consultant, which doesn’t include one on religious music, Varner said.

Sandy Krueger, chief

operating officer emeritus at Neola, said the group relies on districts to inform it of important “district-specific policies,” including legally mandated ones.

“We would have absolutely no way to be aware of that” court settlement, Krueger said.

The Neola template does have a suggested policy stating: “Under current Supreme Court decisions, school officials may not mandate or organize prayer at graduation nor organize religious baccalaureate ceremonies.” The Columbus Board of Education didn’t choose to adopt that policy, either.

The Columbus Jewish Federation pressed the district to ban religious music from graduations in 2002. Federation spokesman Justin Shaw said Friday that the group expects, along with many others in the community, that the district “will follow and respect the law.”

Vander Does, who is an atheist, said he didn’t object to Christian music because of his beliefs.

“It was about the constitutional separation of church and state,” Vander Does said in an email. “The schools should not be proselytizing in music classes or at school functions. But they were, both in the almost exclusive programming of Christian music and in the evangelical content of that music.

“I had suffered through programs of exclusively, and frequently evangelical, Christian music through many years of my daughters’ concerts. The graduation was the last straw.”

A federal judge in Columbus has refused to give permission for attorneys to question a neo-Nazi website publisher’s relatives about the man’s whereabouts.

A Muslim-American radio host’s lawyers have been searching in vain for The Daily Stormer’s publisher, Andrew Anglin, who grew up near Worthington, since they filed a libel lawsuit against him in August. They want to ask Anglin’s father and brother under oath if they know where he is living, so he can be served with a copy of the suit.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth A. Preston Deavers denied that request Thursday, saying the “prejudice” to Anglin’s relatives outweighs the need for such testimony. Veterans Day is Saturday.

Post offices are closed on Saturday and no mail will be delivered.

City of Columbus parking meters will be enforced Saturday.

Columbus Metropolitan Library branches will be open Saturday.

The Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) will operate on a regular schedule Saturday.