"We certainly don’t want to offend anyone"

In the interest of inoffensiveness New Haven makes a minor change on its high school diplomas:

All it took was one complaint for the school district to make a small but significant change to diplomas that will be handed out at graduations this week.

For the first time in as long as anyone can remember, diplomas for New Haven high school students were printed without the phrase “in the year of our Lord.”

It’s a small change that could easily go unnoticed, but Superintendent of Schools Reginald Mayo feels it was a necessary one.

“It’s a religious thing,” he said Tuesday. Then, regarding the deleted language: “I’m surprised it took this long for someone to notice it. We certainly don’t want to offend anyone.”

This will be the first year without the language. For example, diplomas from last year state that the diploma was awarded “this twenty-fifth day of June in the year of our Lord, Two Thousand Nine.”

When will someone notice why the year is counted as 2010?

New Haven high school diplomas drop phrase ‘in the year of our Lord’- The New Haven Register - Serving New Haven, Connecticut