According to Campus Reform, Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees President Robert Miller has nixed the Pledge of Allegiance from all future board meetings because, he claims, it's “steeped in expressions of nativism and white nationalism."
“I decided to discontinue use of the Pledge of Allegiance for reasons related to its history and symbolism,” Miller said in an email he wrote to Celeste Barber, a former adjunct instructor at SBCC, and obtained by Campus Reform. “I have discovered that the Pledge of Allegiance has a history steeped in expressions of nativism and white nationalism."
The report also notes that the city college’s board meetings haven’t included the pledge since Miller first took over as president in January.
Live stream videos of the board's past several meetings show that the last time members recited the Pledge of Allegiance during a board meeting was Dec. 13. During the Jan. 10 live-streamed meeting, Miller noted at the beginning that it was his first meeting as president of the board. It was also the first meeting since a similar circumstance in summer 2018 that members did not recite the pledge.
Interestingly, the Pledge of Allegiance was actually first written by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union Army Officer during the Civil War. The current shortened version was compiled by Francis Bellamy – who was a socialist, actually, and an ardent supporter of blacks’ and women’s rights – to “instill into the minds of our American youth a love for their country and the principles on which it was founded.” The final version as we know it wasn't adopted as the official Pledge of Allegiance until 1942, during the height of World War II.