College Orders Student to Remove Jesus From Graduation Speech
A Colorado university was forced to backtrack after it questionably demanded a student remove Bible passages from a graduation speech she was elected to give by her classmates. Colorado Mesa University nursing student Karissa Erickson was chosen to address graduates at an event days before their commencement this month, but her speech was nearly derailed by school administrators who were concerned about the religious themes of her prepared remarks.
As the Daily Sentinel reported, Erickson was to speak at the CMU nursing program’s pinning ceremony on May 10. Prior to the ceremony, the student was asked to submit her remarks to school officials—though no formal guidelines regarding what could and could not be said were reportedly ever given—and she was soon told that she would not be able to deliver her speech as written because she cited John 16:33. “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace,” the passage reads. “In the world you have tribulation, but take comfort, I have overcome the world.”
Rather then bend to the school’s threatened “repercussions,” Erickson alerted the Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit based in Scottsdale, Arizona, to the discrimination. The organization sent a letter to CMU administrators on May 4, asking the college to reconsider its position. {eoa}
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