LAKE TRAVIS PARENTS SPLIT ON RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY

Organizers of ‘Christian,’ ‘all faiths’ events at Lake Travis High to meet.

This month, an email went out to parents of Lake Travis High School seniors announcing that two baccalaureate ceremonies were being planned for the students to choose from, alarming and angering some parents.

Now, the two parent groups — one favoring a ceremony like the Christian-based baccalaureates in past years, and the other wanting the ceremony to be more inclusive — have agreed to meet next month to try and reach a compromise.

The baccalaureate ceremony is a tradition for graduating Lake Travis seniors, typically taking place the Sunday before graduation. The ceremony is optional and is religious in nature.

In an email to senior parents, the organizers of Project Graduation indicated they would no longer be responsible for planning the baccalaureate ceremony, and that parent groups were taking over two separate services. The email called one a “Christian-Only Service.” The other ceremony, the email said, was the “new All Faiths Lake Travis Baccalaureate.”

Reaction to the email on social media was swift and largely condemning.

“How very sad,” one person wrote on the Lake Travis High School Project Graduation Facebook page. “When they go to work are they going to be split by faith? No more unity in our communities! God bless us one and all.”

“Wow, is about all I can say,” someone wrote on the Lakeway Gripes and Grins Facebook page. “I find that hard to believe in this day and age. I am pretty disgusted.”

Dana May, listed as a parent organizer of the “Christian Only” service, said the service was not for Christians only; anyone is welcome to attend.

“It never has been,” May said. “This is a longstanding tradition in Lake Travis. I had seniors graduate in 2016, and it was my favorite graduation ceremony, so I volunteered to help . ... People got upset because they wanted a lot of other faiths up there doing tes-

timonies, and we haven’t met to see how that would even look. Our community is mostly Christian, and this is America, and we have the right to worship the way that we want. The baccalaureate is a religious ceremony for graduates the Sunday before commencement. It’s a real special blessing from the Lord for our kids.”

May described a ceremony at Lake Hills Church that would be similar to those in previous years where a speaker gives a “spiritual message” to the graduates and scriptures are read. It’s a Christian church service, she said, but anyone can come.

An ideological split became apparent this year when some parents asked to incorporate more elements into the ceremony from other religions. Michelle Poole, who is listed as the organizer of the all-faith ceremony, said she decided to do it because a student approached her and asked if they could have a baccalaureate ceremony similar to Westlake High School’s, which is expressly all-faith. Initially, she said, some parents weren’t open to the idea.

“We’ve formed a group of moms who want to make sure we include people of other faiths, and so we reached out to Westlake moms who have been doing an interfaith baccalaureate ceremony for over 15 years now, and they’ve given us some really good hints and ideas as far as how to integrate the different faiths to kind of bless the students,” Poole said. “I don’t think it’s right, morally, to exclude people.”

An all-faiths baccalaureate might include speakers of several religions and then allow the students to share “faith stories” or statements about how their faith has affected their lives.

May and Poole said the goal of the meeting in January is to make the two ceremonies into one, in the interest of the senior students. But they each have their reservations about the other approach.

“I don’t want to homogenize it,” May said. “When you try to homogenize it to please everyone, then no one gets anything out of it. That’s what I want to avoid.”

“I would hope that we could have one baccalaureate and maybe move a little bit away from just having it be Christian-based,” Poole said. “It’s baby steps . ... (But) if I have a friend who is vegetarian and I invite them to my house for dinner and all I serve is meat, what does that say?”