Pledge of Allegiance

Recently, Brookline has received attention in the national news due to a petition to adjust the Pledge of Allegiance policy within the Brookline Public Schools.

While it would be easy to misunderstand the proposal and label it as an anti-patriotic effort to ban the Pledge of Allegiance, this is not the case.  Could you look at this issue and say that the effort to ban the Pledge of Allegiance is patriotic because the petitioners are using democratic means to try to bring change? Could you look at the issue and say that the initial idea of these efforts would limit the First Amendment rights of students who wish to recite the Pledge in school and is unpatriotic. But to only acknowledge these two options would be to ignore the nuance.

Regardless, this issue has been over-hyped by the national and local press. This change would effect possibly six elementary schools, if any at all, by changing whether or not they say the Pledge of Allegiance during principals’ announcements or before school. The sensationalizing of the issue has brought a slew of hate mail and angry phone calls to the petitioners and the school over something that will not dramatically impact our lives as students.

However, Brookline is laudable for modeling the merits of our democratic system and reinvigorating the elective process in which our laws are formed.

It is a shame that the national spotlight has arisen due to the media’s sensationalization and misrepresentation of information.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

The United States military repealed its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on Sept. 20. To some, this may seem like a minimal event, but to others it is quite momentous.

This policy, instituted in 1993, promised that servicemen would not be asked about their sexual preferences, as long as the servicemen did not talk about their sexual preferences. This was an attempt to allow homosexual citizens the ability to serve in the military by denouncing a part of them.

The U.S. government officially voted this increasingly archaic policy of legalized discrimination out in May of 2011. To uproar and cheers, the change has begun to pave the road for equal opportunity in a country built on the phrase, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal.”

It may seem like the repeal of this policy has brought no visible changes to our school, but the impact is real.  Openly gay and lesbian students may now consider the military and our nation’s military academies as institutions that value who they are.

Our government’s discriminatory policy, whether or not it directly affected everyone, did taint our nation’s credibility as a symbol of freedom and equality. While the change may not be easy for everyone, all American soldiers can now credibly say they fight to defend the values that Americans and our nation as a whole hold true; the dream of “liberty, and justice for all.” This was not true under DADT, where some where devalued to the point where they could only be there if they remained silent about who they were.

It is fitting that this policy was scrapped just as the national Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial was dedicated.  As we remember his dream, we look ahead to new opportunities for gay and lesbian soldiers.