Christian invocation at Hutton?

This past Sunday at the Founders Day Honors Convocation, which pays tribute to student academic achievement, I was astonished to hear a very Christian invocation thanking God for giving us strength and motivation to succeed throughout the years and asking that we be able to maintain this strength and motivation in the future.

Indeed, after the opening remarks of Interim Provost and Executive Vice President Lauren Robel, we all stood, many bowed their heads, and an invocation that was very clearly Christian was delivered to students and our families.

I wasn’t the only one who was surprised — I heard a girl behind me mutter, “Is this allowed?” It shouldn’t be.

I think the invocation was very nice — it was well-intentioned, and its overall message was one of good will, wishing us to continue our hard work as students.

It wasn’t so overtly Christian that it ended with an “amen” or anything of the sort. However, I think this is beyond the point because the invocation was very obviously Christian (at one point the word “mission” was used to describe our academic and life goals).

The point isn’t that it was Christian. I would have been equally upset had a clearly Buddhist or Jewish or Jain or Muslim invocation been delivered. The point is that a religious invocation was delivered at all. IU is a public university with a richly diverse student body, and this should be celebrated.

Rather than harkening back to the Christian tradition of IU — IU-Bloomington was originally founded as the “state seminary,” and the first string of presidents were all Christian clergymen of some sort  — perhaps a speech should be given commemorating the great diversity of academically successful students at IU. After all, this is something that everyone can relate to and celebrate.

That the group of students at the Honors Convocation on Sunday reflected the diversity of the larger IU student body (diversity that includes, no doubt, many different religious traditions) is something that merits a speech more so than an invocation that is not pertinent to all students.  

­— ccleahy@indiana.edu