The Sneeze Facts
The facts of the story are these:
The incident the e-mail is based upon took place on 20 May 2001 dur-
ing the commencement exercises at Washington Community High
School in Washington, Illinois. With the help of the ACLU, the family of
Natasha Appenheimer, that year’s valedictorian, brought suit to prevent
the inclusion of the invocation and benediction traditionally given at the
school’s commencement ceremony. The suit was decided in the favour
of the Appenheimers when, three days before the ceremony, the court
handed down a temporary injunction barring the inclusion of the prayers
on the basis of their having been deemed “school sponsored” (and
thereby an unconstitutional violation of the first amendment’s
“establishment clause”). Though the school had said it would contest
the ruling that barred it from sponsoring prayer at its graduation cere-
monies, it dropped such plans in July 2001 once it came to some
appreciation of how much such a legal battle might cost.
People were angered by the decision, which overturned a tradition of 80
years’ standing at Washington Community High. Many found unique
ways of protesting the judge’s ruling. Before the ceremony, students
organized a prayer vigil around the school’s flagpole. Some 5 0 seniors
clasped hands in a circle while about 150 underclassmen and members
of the community encircled them. Several students festooned their mor-
tarboards with religious slogans: “I’m praying now,” “Amen,” “1 nation
under God,” “I will still pray 2 day,” and “Let’s Pray 01.” One parent
distributed 120 homemade wood-and-nail crosses among the students.
Yet it was the act of Ryan Brown, a member of the graduating class
who was scheduled to give a speech during the event, that is now cele-
brated in the e-mail forward. As his form of protest, he had worked it out
with a handful of friends that when he faked a sneeze at the podium,
they were to cry out “God bless you.” The plan was carried out as envi-
sioned, with everyone who had been in on it playing their assigned
parts. (Mr. Brown also made another protest on his way to the podium:
he stopped to bow in silent prayer, an act that prompted the audience to
stand and applaud. He replied to the crowd, “Don’t applaud for me,
applaud for God.”)
A month after the commencement, the online account began to circu-
late. In that embellished version, the speaker’s sneeze was cast as
being accidental, and the response it provoked spontaneously and
unthinkingly issued from each of the graduating students almost as if
they had spoken with one voice.
St Margaret’s News
7
February 2018