53,000 High School Diplomas Recalled

(Baton Rouge, Louisiana) When Louisiana Education Superintendent Cecil Picard discovered that a change had been made to the official high school diploma without his authorization, he ordered them to be recalled and destroyed. About 53,000 diplomas need to be replaced because a lower level committee decided to change the date format from A.D. - "the year of our Lord" - to C.E. - the notation for "common era," without Cecil Picard's approval.

The department committee apparently believed that eliminating a reference to God was merely an administrative change and it didn't require authorization. The committee erred.