McKinley pride built in
code, officials say

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By Crystal Kua
ckua@starbulletin.com

The McKinley High School Code of Honor, which includes a line about "Love for God" that has caused a stir, dates back to 1927 and has more to do with school pride than with religion, school officials say.

"To me it's a historical document. It's a sign of the times of 1927, the virtues they thought of in 1927," said Gaile Sykes, a McKinley special-education teacher and volunteer school historian.

Mitchell Kahle, president of Hawaii Citizens for the Separation of State and Church, said this week that his organization has received a complaint from an unidentified McKinley teacher who alleges that the code promotes religion.

Kahle has written a letter to state schools Superintendent Pat Hamamoto and McKinley Principal Milton Shishido demanding that the code, or at least the reference to God, be removed from public property to keep with the constitutional separation of church and state.

The code says that a McKinley student stands for a myriad of attributes, including "For Brotherhood of races all combined and Love for God and all Mankind."

The code is posted in classrooms and in the student handbook.

Hamamoto, who was principal at McKinley from 1992 to 1998, said yesterday that no decision has been made on the code.

"We will have to take a look at the wording and the occasions it's used and the circumstances," she said.

But Hamamoto said that the code's history is not religious in nature.

"It is really unfortunate ... we would be looking at this with a different set of views than what it was intended to promote," Hamamoto said.

The code is the combined effort of two homeroom classes that tied for first place in a 1927 contest put on by a private corporation on writing the best code of behavior, according to a McKinley High School 1965 centennial celebration book cited by Sykes. The code later was put to music.

Sykes said that about three or four years ago, she rescued a plaque with the code dating back to 1927 and placed it in the school's Hall of Honor.

To instill school pride, the Code of Honor was put on posters along with a picture of President McKinley and other slogans, Sykes said. "We asked teachers to display that and another school pride poster."

The school code is now sung by the school choir and recited at different ceremonies.

Sykes said that the code is student-driven and one has to look at the totality of code's beginnings in determining whether religion plays a role.

"Do you think the Pledge of Allegiance promotes religion?" Sykes asked, referring to the "one nation under God" line in the pledge.