Saddleback College President's “Prayer” Order Supported by Board

, I reported that Tod Burnett, President of Saddleback College (one of the two colleges of the South Orange County Community College District), has ordered that there will be a prayer at next week’s commencement ceremony, despite the unanimous decision of the college commencement planning committee to forgo a prayer—and despite the recent settlement agreement of “Westphal v. Wagner,” which plainly states that the committee and the committee alone is to make the decision regarding whether to have a prayer:

The decision on whether to select a speaker to deliver … an invocation … shall rest within the sole discretion of the event planners, whether they be students, faculty, administration, classified employees of the district, or a combination thereof. (See settlement agreement.)

Yesterday, attorneys for plaintiffs filed an emergency motion to enforce the settlement agreement.

According to their motion, 

The settlement agreement provides that the decision at issue … rests with the event planners’ “sole discretion.” The event planners for the Saddleback College commencement are the members of the Saddleback College Commencement Committee; that Committee voted unanimously to have a moment of silence but no invocation. After the Committee made its unanimous decision, Defendant Tod Burnett, the President of Saddleback College—and not a member of the Committee—unilaterally overruled the Committee and ordered the presentation of an invocation at the May 20, 2011 commencement.

Defendants—essentially, South Orange County Community College District trustees (plus Burnett)—are standing by Burnett’s action.

Meanwhile, Irvine Valley College appears to be complying with the settlement agreement. IVC's commencement planning committee evidently decided in favor of a prayer but made that decision without the involvement of outsiders, including the college president, or so I have been assured by some of its members. Further, at today’s IVC scholarship awards ceremony, there was no prayer, as per the settlement agreement.

Defendants are claiming that President Burnett is the “chief event planner” who is the ultimate decision-maker as to whether there is an invocation at commencement. They deny that they are violating the settlement agreement.

And so, having already spent over a million dollars defending their arrogant actions (e.g., then-trustee Don Wagner’s notorious rant against critics of district prayer at a Saddleback scholarship ceremony and then-Chancellor Raghu Mathur’s showing of a slide show, including a message about “Christ” saving our souls, before district faculty), the board will now spend even more taxpayer money on their pricey Jones Day lawyers in defending this latest action.

Note: Roy Bauer is among the plaintiffs of “Westphal v. Wagner.”