In the latest skirmish over the division between church and state, the University of Maryland, College Park's University Senate voted to nix the opening prayer during the coming graduation. The university's president, supposedly under outside pressure, overrode the decision and reinstated the prayer. This move did nothing to stop the student protests and it shouldn't have.
UMD is a public university, funded by taxpayer money. A prayer at the beginning of the graduation ceremonies violates the basic separation of church and state. A prayer, no matter how inclusive to people of other religions, by its very definition excludes students who don't believe in God. Exclusion, especially along religious grounds, is unacceptable at a state university.
This argument in no way applies to AU. Trying to make it apply to this university is a violation of another tenet of the U.S. Constitution - the right to free speech. AU was founded as a Methodist institution, and more importantly, as a private institution. As a private institution, this university has the right to include prayer at the beginning of graduation ceremonies. As a classically Methodist institution, AU has the right to include or exclude any religion, group or belief structure it should see fit. As a private institution, students were not forced to come here, but instead specifically selected. This university's Methodist affiliation is no secret.
With that said, we surely hope that the administration doesn't try anything silly. AU, while not ethnically diverse, is surely religiously - or non-religiously - diverse. Some students believe in God, some do not. Some believe that Jesus Christ is their savior, others do not. There are many different religions represented on this campus and the opening prayer should represent this.
Students at private universities - even secular institutions like George Washington University - should be wary of pushing too hard to have the opening invocations cut from ceremonies. By attempting to drag one constitutional guarantee through the dirt, they may inadvertently knock the very necessary secularization of state schools off track.
