Petitioners plan to ban the Pledge of Allegiance? That is far from the truth.

The media’s many misconceptions regarding the petition to change the Pledge of Allegiance policy made the petitioners clarify their wording.

“The media has characterized this as banning the Pledge from schools,” said Marty Rosenthal, co-Chair of Brookline Pax. “That’s not what were trying to do.”

Brookline Pax is a liberal progressive political organization in support of the petition to change the Pledge of Allegiance policy.

When they constructed their original warrant, the petitioners included the banning of the Pledge of Allegiance as their first of two alternatives to the current policy. Many people saw the first proposed change and stopped looking.

“We have also offered a compromise, which is all we are trying to accomplish,” said Rosenthal. The original compromise was to have the Pledge recited at school assemblies instead of in the classroom. Rosenthal said that the fishbowl environment of the classroom is not the appropriate place for the Pledge because unintentional bullying may occur towards students who don’t want to recite it.

Rosenthal and the others in support of the petition reworded the warrant to clarify their goals and method of implementation.

In the most recent version of the document, the Pledge would be said at assemblies or before school. Also, the petition states that they would like students to be taught about the meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance. Finally, the petition offers the National Anthem to be sung instead of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Prior to these changes many misconceptions arose and many persist.

Some have wrongly believed that Town Meeting would vote to put this warrant into effect in a manner similar to putting a law into effect. In reality, according to Assistant Headmaster Hal Mason,  “The School Committee would have to vote as to whether to accept or decline the recommendation.”

Another misconception stems from confusion with ownership of the proposal.

“This is not my proposal, and this is not Brookline Pax’s proposal, although Pax has endorsed it,” said Rosenthal. “I think it is a common mistake that I am seeing in all the media.”

According to Rosenthal, six former School Committee members signed the petition and most notably State Representative Frank Smizik. In total about 14 people signed the petition, though only 10 were needed to bring the proposal before Town Meeting.

“We don’t take opinions on everything brought before Town Meeting. There are a lot of things brought before Town Meeting, so there is no official school position on anything brought before them,” said Mason. “But we sincerely doubt this will be an issue.”

Mason reaffirmed that news reports have been misleading.

“We have been on TV, and the TV says ‘Brookline High School is banning the Pledge of Allegiance.’ That is just the way TV is.”

As a result of the many media magnifications of the warrant, both the school and Rosenthal himself have received hate mail.

“People see this on the news, they get charged and they don’t realize that this is just Town Meeting,” said Mason. “I think it is a terrific thing that people can use local government in an attempt to bring change to their community.”

Max Friedman can be contacted at [email protected]