Dan's Papers - October 5, 2007 - The Battle in Sag Harbor for the Pierson High School Seal

When I went to school as a little boy, every morning we stood up by our desks, placed our hands over our hearts and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

This was a mouthful for a six-year-old to have to learn. And as I recall, at the time, all us first graders thought there was somebody named Richard Stans who was very important in all of this and perhaps when we were older, we would find out why. But eventually we learned it. And then they changed it.

It happened in third grade. There was a new part of the pledge we had to learn. We started the same way we always did, but then at this one particular part, the teacher stopped us and, very loudly, told us the new phrase.

"...One nation, UNDER GOD, with liberty and justice for all."

As I recall, it created a bit of a stir. But the phrase had been added to the pledge, in order to distinguish us from the enemy we were fighting at the time - the Soviet Union. They didn't believe in God. We did.

And so it has been, since that day, "under God," I think. If they even still recite the pledge. Or maybe "under God" is out since now we've all come to believe that the whole business about God does not belong in our schools.

In any case, this week there is a new wrinkle in the old God/school issue here at the Pierson High School in Sag Harbor. And all I can say is I wonder what God thinks about all of this. One year he's in, another year he's out. These people he created don't know what the hell they are doing.

At a School Board meeting two weeks ago, a subcommittee presented a plan to put new signs up at the school to make it easier for the students, teachers and visitors to get around. Pierson High School is not a particularly big high school by state standards, but it is big enough, the Board thought, that signs everywhere to tell you where you were and where you might go to get somewhere else, would be a good idea. However you looked at it, there would be fewer people asking where places were - the science lab, the boy's room, the guidance office - you get the idea. And that might save a lot of time.

In the course of things, the project, still in its planning stages, got expanded upon. They could have a big directory at the school entrance. It could be color coded, there could be a map, and at the entrance to the different rooms there could be shingle-style affairs sticking out over the doors a foot or so, again color coded, to show you where you were. It could be really spiffy. Like they have at enclosed shopping malls.

Also, while they were at it, why not hire some designer to make them all look alike? And why not have one, really big, over the front door to the school, in the same typestyle so you could clearly know that you were in the right place? Throw that in, too.

The committee had not only been charged to have a designer submit a plan for one of the signs so they could see what all this might look like, but they were also asked to get an estimate of the price. And so now they were back.

The sign they presented, as you might expect, was a sketch of how a sign might look over the entrance to the school. It looked pretty good. But, one of the school board members, Kathryn Holden, noted it appeared that something was missing. It was the school seal. Shouldn't they have the school seal on the sign?

Ms. Holden said she didn't remember what the school seal said because it was written in Latin, but she remembered there was one and asked if anybody in the room did remember. Walter Tice, who is the School Board President, said he also didn't recall the exact wording because it was in Latin, but translated into English it meant, "Our Hope is in God."

"Well, why wasn't it on there?" Ms. Holden wanted to know.

It turned out that the designer of the sign, who was in the room to explain his work, had personally made the decision to leave it off.

A few people looked at the designer, a man named Dhruva Corrigan.

"If the board does choose to include that expression," he said, "I won't be able to design it for you."

That comment was a sort of showstopper. And there was an awkward silence. But then, Mr. Tice commented that perhaps it would create a problem, in terms of getting federal funding for the school, having that slogan back up there. There was, of course, the business about the separation of church and state.

The discussion ended with a report that the total estimated cost of all this signage had now spiraled up to about $20,000, which was another showstopper.

"When the time comes," said school business manager Leonard Bernard, "this should definitely go out to bid."

And that was the end of it.

Except that it wasn't. For one thing, I did wonder, having heard all about this, where the sign with the original seal for the school was now. So I called the school and was told that about fifteen years ago the exterior of the century old school went through a complete renovation. They actually closed the school for a time. And during that renovation, when there was a lot of sandblasting done to remove all the soot and grime off the granite sills and cornices and brickwork, the sign was taken down. And now nobody knew where it was.

And what, I wondered, did this phrase mean? "Our Hope is in God," after all, is not nearly as forceful as the more well known "In God We Trust," which is on all our money and because of the separation of church and state, is why all the kids and teachers have to empty their pockets and throw all the bills and coins into a big pot before they can cross the threshold to go to school.

Trusting in God is pretty clear. We do what we do. We put our trust in God to keep an eye out that what we do is okay.

"Our Hope is in God" is something else. It has several meanings. It could mean that we hope there is a God, which, I might add, might be something that we can almost all agree upon. Surely there being a God is better than there not being a God. In the long run, anyway.

But it could also mean that when we hope for something, we hope God looks kindly upon it. So maybe he gets it for us and maybe he doesn't.

Whether this is splitting hairs or not, I don't know, but it did compel me to surf the Internet to try and get the exact Latin phrase of what was over the door to the school. At the meeting, nobody could remember it. They might have passed under it every day. But the truth is that when there is something Latin written over a library or museum door or, God forbid, a school door, most of us just look at it and think well, this must be pretty august premises to have such important Latin words above the entrance. What the words themselves were is sort of a blur.

So here's what I found when I went to a program that translates English into Latin or Latin into English.

The sign over the door must have read, "Nostrum spes est in Deus." A pretty fancy phrase indeed.

But now that I had this software program open, I was curious to try some other translations.

I tried "Proper Dress is Required in Southampton Village," which, as you know, is on the signs posted on all the main roads that lead into that town. If it was in Latin, it would read "Verus Vestio est Postulo in Southampton Villa."

I tried 'No Access to the Beach." This came back as "Hand Obvius ut Beach."

I tried "In God We Trust" and that came back "In Deus Nos Fides."

But that made me even more curious. With this program, you could also take something in Latin and translate it back into English. So I tried "In Deus Nos Fides" and it came back in English as "Upon God We Assurance."

So now I don't know what to tell you.

And here is how some of the others came back.

"Proper Dress is Required in Southampton Village" when translated into Latin and then back again into English comes back as "True to Clothe is to Ask Upon Southampton Country House."

And if you wash "Our Hope is In God" into Latin it returns back as "Our Hope is Upon God."

Put the gosh darn great seal of the Howard J. Pierson High School of Higher Learning back over the front door for heaven's sake.