They prayed anyway. Defying a court order, parents and students at Utah public high school graduation ceremony sang one of the religious songs over which a Jewish student waged a legal battle.
The choir at West High School in Salt Lake City, including Rachel Bauchman, had finished singing the two secular songs that replaced the religious ones a court had barred. Then, graduating senior Will Badger approached the microphone to plead for the song.
He said “Friends,” one of the banned songs, had been a West High School tradition for more than five years.
In a telephone interview from her home, Bauchman, 16, and her parents said the incident was “a shame.”
“It’s a shame that graduation was ruined not by Rachel but by the students who were complaining she was ruining it. It’s a shame that the students went in direct violation of the court order,” Cheryl Bauchman, Rachel’s mother, said.
The incident came after a week of legal battling over the issue. Bauchman filed a suit in U.S. District Court last week, alleging that the school’s choir class violated her constitutional rights by continuously performing religious songs.
The suit included a temporary restraining order asking that “Friends” and “May the Lord Bless You and Keep You,” not be sung at the Wednesday ceremony.
A U.S. District Court Judge denied the order, but his decision was overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver just one day before the ceremony.
Cheryl Bauchman said the family is consulting with their lawyers about further action.
“I want to make it so that every kid has an equal opportunity to perform in a public school choir,” Rachel Bauchman said.
“I just don’t want any other child to go through what I’ve gone through,” she said.
The National Committee for Public Schools and Religious Liberty, which assisted the Bauchmans in their legal battle, also condemned the incident.
“It’s really disconcerting when people take the law into their own hands like this,” said the group’s executive director, Lisa Thurau. The organization includes some Jewish groups.
“I don’t think you can get a clearer example than this of people trying to impose” religion on someone, she said, adding the some in the school felt “hostile” toward the Bauchmans.
Thurau said the latest development is “all the more reason” to continue Bauchman’s legal battle against the school.
Bauchman and her mother, Cheryl, walked out after the song was over at the graduation, but Rachel Bauchman said she felt “very uncomfortable” during the song.
“I had 4,000 pairs of eyes staring at me,” she said. “I felt like a second- class citizen. Like I wasn’t welcome in my own school choir.”
Several students, including the salutatorian, who is Jewish and a member of the choir, walked out with the Bauchmans, she and her mother said.
About half the audience stood, Cheryl Bauchman said, adding that not all of the choir sang.
The principal tried to stop the song, and a police officer led Badger off the stage. No disciplinary action has been taken so far.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
