The narrative was irresistible. In the fall of 2015, PC culture had reached absurd proportions on college campuses. What began as the airing of legitimate grievances turned into a me-too circus of faux victimization, culminating with students seeking counseling because they saw a confederate-flag sticker on a laptop.
Someone needed to step into the leadership vacuum, issue a reality check, and plead for a return to sanity. Who would be that voice of reason? It took a brave college president from a little-known evangelical college to step up and say enough is enough. Or at least that’s what Oklahoma Wesleyan University wants us to think.
“This is not a day care. This is a university!” declared the university’s president, Everett Piper, in an open letter republished by numerous news outlets, including The Washington Post. “Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a ‘safe place,’ but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others,” he wrote.
Finally, a necessary correction. A rejoinder to the culture of coddling. A “wake-up call to special snowflakes,” as one website put it.
Alas, the truth is much more complicated. I know this because I’m a refugee from a similarly conservative evangelical college. I earned a bachelor’s degree from Asbury University in 1999 and came back to teach there years later, while completing my Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky. Although I enjoyed my time at Asbury as an undergraduate, I became increasingly disillusioned with the place as it turned more militantly conservative over the past decade. Consequently, I can usually smell conservative-evangelical hypocrisy a mile away.
This was not a David-and-Goliath story of a small college standing up to PC culture. This was a closed-minded evangelical college pretending to be above the political fray.
Although news outlets all over the world, from the New York Daily News in America to the Daily Mail in England, loved the “not a day care” line, a simple Google search for the Oklahoma Wesleyan student handbook shatters the narrative. This was not a David-and-Goliath story of a small college standing up to PC culture. This was a closed-minded evangelical college pretending to be above the political fray. And instead of teaching us a lesson about the responsibilities of adulthood, this episode merely illustrates that small Christian colleges are not above opportunistic political stunts to bolster enrollment.
Piper’s letter begins with a bewildering story of a student who said he felt “victimized” during a chapel service at the university. The sermon featured a reading from 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13 — the “love is patient, love is kind” passage. “I have a message for this young man and all others who care to listen,” Piper wrote. “That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience!”
Be more loving. Right. What reasonable person would disagree with that? But has Oklahoma Wesleyan taken that advice? Does it, for instance, love transgender people? You tell me, after reading this quote from Page 8 of the university’s 2014-15 student handbook: “We maintain that a person does not have the right to alter one’s sexual identity, for surely this would be a defilement of the body which is the temple of the Holy Spirit (I Cor. 6:19).” For those not familiar with Christian scripture, that’s 1 Corinthians, Chapter 6, Verse 19. So, if you’re a transgender person who has undergone gender-reassignment surgery, you’re not welcome at Oklahoma Wesleyan. You have “defiled” your body. And yes, that’s the same book of the Bible that Piper cites as the reason for the student’s seemingly outrageous claim of being offended. If you’re appalled by the fact that a school would use the same biblical passage to both encourage love and to shame transgender people, you’re starting to understand conservative evangelical colleges.
Am I being too harsh? OKWU is certainly not alone in its backward view of gender crossers. But let’s say a prospective student recently took advantage of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling and is now legally married to someone of the same sex. Can this person attend Oklahoma Wesleyan?
The answer is an emphatic no. Not only does Oklahoma Wesleyan forbid gay relationships, but the college actually severed ties with the nation’s most prominent organization of conservative evangelical colleges because it didn’t condemn gay marriage strongly enough. When two member colleges announced they would permit faculty members to be in a same-sex marriage, it was just too much for Oklahoma Wesleyan to handle.
“We believe in missional clarity and view the defense of the Biblical definition of marriage as an issue of critical importance to Christian colleges,” Piper said in announcing the institution’s split with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. “The CCCU’s reluctance to make a swift decision sends a message of confusion rather than conviction.”
To put it mildly, then, Oklahoma Wesleyan is behind the curve when it comes to LGBT rights. But what about the more general issue of coddling college students? Can OKWU at least be a refuge for students who don’t want to be treated like little children — that is, like they’re in day care?
Let’s take a look at the student handbook to find out. If you’re a 22-year-old student who enjoys dancing, are you allowed to dance? Maybe, but to avoid any censure, you should make sure it’s ballroom dancing. The 2015-16 handbook states that “patronizing dance clubs” is considered a minor violation of school policy. Why? Because of the “illicit sexual dancing” that happens there, as the handbook so eloquently puts it. In addition to that 19th-century tent-revival-era rule, note the additional implication: The university wants to know what you’re doing off campus as well as on.
Most college students are allowed to leave their rooms whenever they want. You might say it’s one of the hallmarks of life outside day care. And Oklahoma Wesleyan does generously allow you to come and go as you please — during the day. But coming in late after curfew, or “sneaking out at night,” in the handbook’s wording, is another minor violation of school policy.
No dancing. No sneaking out at night. What then, exactly, can you do at this place that’s a university and “not a day care”? A little harmless mischief within the dorm? Say, putting a whoopee cushion on someone’s chair? Shaking someone’s hand with a hand buzzer? What about hiding your roommate’s sock drawer?
Better be careful, you wild and crazy kids. Pranks — even “non-destructive” pranks — are also a minor violation of school policy.
What’s the punishment for such minor violations? They’re “likely to result in mediation to probation” on the first occurrence. You’d better play it safe.
Well, different religious groups have different standards, and as long as they’re not taking the public coin, why should we care?
But wait. According to The Wall Street Journal’s database of accredited colleges, Oklahoma Wesleyan raked in $12.6 million in federal student loans and grants in 2013-14. In other words, your tax money is helping students attend a college that not only discriminates against legally married gay students, but also forbids students from dancing.
Evangelical colleges are struggling. My own alma mater, Asbury University, I’m ashamed to say, has a “human sexuality statement” that forbids gay marriage. The day after the Obergefell decision, a former president of Asbury, John Oswalt, publicly called for $100-million in new fund raising, in part to survive the day when the government requires accredited colleges to admit transgender and gay students. “I think it is a very, very real possibility that within 10 years, maybe sooner than that, a college will not be able to distribute federal funds unless they sign a nondiscrimination pact with regard to gender,” he said in remarks recorded for posterity during an alumni reunion. “That means that Asbury [University] needs an endowment of about $100 million. … You as alumni of Asbury have to step up to the plate here.”
Another former president, William Crothers, raised the stakes by saying, “That’s only going to happen — now listen to me — that’s only going to happen if each one of you takes seriously your obligation to put this institution in your will or in your estate plan.”
How do small evangelical colleges survive in a hypercompetitive environment? One way is to get into donors’ last wills and testaments. But another way, as illustrated by OKWU, is to burnish one’s conservative credentials by claiming to be above the PC rhetoric. If your school doesn’t allow dancing, pranks, or “sneaking out at night,” you probably aren’t going to be attracting students interested in addressing institutional racism anyway. The reason you’re not hearing more voices like Piper’s is that most college presidents have to take their students’ grievances seriously, and the answers are not so simple.
The “not a day care” letter is a shrewd marketing move. But let’s not pretend it’s about a college treating students like adults who can think for themselves. “This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up!” Piper exclaimed in his letter. Right. Just make sure you’re in bed by curfew.
David R. Wheeler is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Tampa who writes frequently for CNN and The Atlantic.