See You at the Pole

See You at the Pole (SYATP) is an annual gathering of thousands of Christian students at a flagpole in front of their local schools for prayer, scripture-reading and worship, during the early morning before school starts. It takes place on the fourth Wednesday in September.

See You at the Pole, the global day of student prayer, began in 1990 as a grass roots movement with ten students praying at their school. Twenty years later, millions pray on their campuses on the fourth Wednesday in September.

See You at the Pole is a student-initiated, student-organized, and student-led event. The events began in 1990 in the United States, where public schools cannot sponsor prayers and some Christians see public schools as hostile to Christian students. It has grown by word of mouth, announcements at youth rallies and churches, and the Internet. It is now an international event; in 2005, over two million students in the U.S. participated, as well as students in Canada, Cote d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Ghana, Guam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, Malaysia, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Scotland, and South Africa.

In the U.S., school-sponsored prayers in public schools have been found unconstitutional, but prayers organized by students themselves are allowed and protected by free speech rights.

The organization advocating and guiding student participation in SYATP events insists that they be exclusively student-initiated and led without official endorsement or interference, according to rights affirmed by the Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District decision of the U.S. Supreme Court—as well as a 1995 Clinton administration assignment of the President's Secretary of Education for legalization of particular school religious activities as long as they passed constitutional guidelines. The American Civil Liberties Union also approves of student-led SYATP events held before or after school, provided the school neither encourages nor discourages participation.

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Wikipedia