LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Student leaders at a California college have touched off a furor by banning the Pledge of Allegiance at their meetings, saying they see no reason to publicly swear loyalty to God and the U.S. government.

The move by Orange Coast College student trustees, the latest clash over patriotism and religion in American schools, has infuriated some of their classmates — prompting one young woman to loudly recite the pledge in front of the board on Wednesday night in defiance of the rule.
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The move was lead by three recently elected student trustees, who ran for office wearing revolutionary-style berets and said they do not believe in publicly swearing an oath to the American flag and government at their school. One student trustee voted against the measure, which does not apply to other student groups or campus meetings.
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“That (‘under God’) part is sort of offensive to me,” student trustee Jason Bell, who proposed the ban, told Reuters. “I am an atheist and a socialist, and if you know your history, you know that ‘under God’ was inserted during the McCarthy era and was directly designed to destroy my ideology.”

Bell said the ban largely came about because the trustees didn’t want to publicly vow loyalty to the American government before their meetings.
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One look at Student Trustee Ball, whose email is comradewho@gmail.com, gives me very little confidence that the young man has either his head on straight or that he may be reasoned with. From the pictures, I’m sure readers can guess the other two trustees who voted with him. One of the them, Coyotl Tezcatlipoca (not his real name of “Benito Acosta”) will be very familiar to Orange County political-types, as he was arrested during a Costa Mesa City Council meeting earlier in the year after flamboyantly cursing councilmembers and resisting police. Tezcatlipoca has become a sort of icon within the radical leftist “Chicano” critters in the county after he garnered a significant amount of media attention.
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