Bob Jones University president Steve Pettit resigns

“The resignation is effective at the end of the current academic year. In a release from the university on March 30, Pettit thanked the students and staff and called his time as president ‘one of the greatest privileges of my life.’” - Post & Courier

Discussion

Details the issues:

https://wutbju.tumblr.com/post/713263550501699584/march-21-2023-dear-bj…

March 21, 2023

Dear BJU Board of Trustees:

Serving as the President of Bob Jones University has been one of the greatest privileges and honors of my life. Being a part of continuing the legacy of our Founder has been a great duty I have joyfully carried. I am also profoundly grateful for the incredible people I have had the privilege to serve alongside in this great work and the thousands of BJU alumni I have met along the way.

After much prayer and consideration, however, I have decided that I cannot continue to serve as the President of Bob Jones University if Dr. John Lewis remains Chairman of the Board.

This is not a conclusion I have reached lightly. When the Board reelected me to another three.year term on November 17, 2022, the Trustees overwhelmingly affirmed and endorsed my leadership and the direction of the University. I believed that the vote showed that we were united in purpose and direction, and my team and I rolled up our sleeves and went to work with the same objectives that we have pursued during my entire tenure as President under the chairmanship of Larry Jackson and then John Lewis.

In the months that followed, I realized that the unity I had hoped for was not to be. In fact, the dysfunction within the Board’s leadership increased, and I have become even more deeply concerned over recent decisions of the Board Chairman, who appears to be committed to taking the University in a new and unknown direction. I have, therefore, concluded it is not possible for me to remain as President of the University if Dr. Lewis remains Chairman. I have come to this conclusion for some of the following reasons.

First, although I have repeatedly urged the Chairman-both in private and before the Board.to pursue unity, he has not done so and, instead, has adopted a posture of secrecy and hostility toward the Board and the administration. For example, Executive Committee meetings have been moved to Bob Jones Ill’s residence. The Chairman forbade Trustees from telling the University’s professional parliamentarian and longstanding corporate c9unsel about a meeting of the Board that had been called in February 2023. Minutes oft he Executive Committee meetings often have not been timely prepared and provided to other Trustees.

Contrary to University policies, sensitive Board documentation has been stored outside the University’s secured network on a new computer purchased at the Chairman’s instruction. Our Board portal, Gavenda, was altered to prevent or hinder Trustees from printing documents.

All requests for Board information must now go through the Chairman exclusively. A new outside lawyer, Ashley Abel, has been retained, supposedly by the Board, but to my knowledge, the full Board has not even been made aware of that. Rather, Mr. Abel appears to be advising the Chairman and select members of the Executive Committee exclusively, and he refuses to communicate with or respond to other Trustees or the administration without the Chairman’s permission. None of this has been explained to the Board or me. By both his actions and his example, the Chairman has heightened, not alleviated, the disunity of the Board over the past several months.

Second, the Chairman has continued to display either an uncaring or cavalier disregard for the cause of troubling financial numbers triggered by the ongoing dysfunction and uncertainty. On a number of occasions over the past months, the University’s CFO has communicated to the Executive Committee and the Board about shortfalls in the University’s current and projected financials and about ongoing deficits in donations and enrollment that are directly linked to a loss of confidence in the University’s direction under the current Board leadership. On each occasion, the Chairman has either misunderstood or deliberately minimized the importance and relevance of the information, causing great concern among our administration that the Chairman seems completely disinterested in the financial stability of the University.

Third, poor decisions have been recently made by the Chairman concerning good board governance. In the signing of my contract, the Board agreed to board training. Recently, a key opportunity arose for board education and the building of good relationships with SACSCOC. The President of SACSCOC offered to come to the campus of BJU to speak to our Board of Trustees during our Spring meeting. The Chairman refused to accept the offer because he deemed the schedule to be too busy. I appealed the decision, and the Chairman turned it down a second time. Another disregard for good corporate governance happened recently when a Trustee was selected by the Executive Committee to serve on the board of the BJU Education Group, despite the fact that this method of selection was contrary to the Education Group’s Bylaws. When the Chairman learned that appointing the Trustee was a violation of the Bylaws and that the BJUEG Board of Trustees did not accept his appointment, the Chairman reacted with irritation and resistance to the decisions of the BJUEG Board.

Fourth, the Chairman has taken actions in the past few weeks to thwart the Trustees’ decision in February to report a matter to the University’s Title IX coordinator as required by law. This followed months of ignoring, minimizing, and delaying consideration of the issue, which arose from one Trustee’s alleged public comments to an alumnus in the presence of a faculty member about whether female students’ clothing and female student athletes’ uniforms accentuate their “boobs and butts.” The alumnus’ letter of complaint to the Board also alleged that the Trustee may have taken unconsented photographs of female students. I don’t know if Letter to the Board of Trustees these allegations are true or not, but our obligation was (and is) to treat them the same way we would any other such allegations, and in February, the Trustees agreed to refer the matter to the Title IX coordinator. The Chairman has recently taken the following steps to impede or obstruct this investigation:

  • When the University’s Title IX coordinator requested relevant excerpts of Board meeting minutes, the Chairman responded eight days later by providing one set of meeting minutes that were almost entirely redacted (including any relevant discussion) and an excerpt from a single Executive Committee meeting containing two relevant sentences.
  • He followed up on that by sending the Title IX coordinator a four-page letter plus attachments on March 17, 2023, that did the following:

o Ordered the coordinator to suspend and postpone the inquiry and investigation until a later date;

o Falsely accused me of working secretly with Positive BJU to weaponize the Title IX process in a coup d'etat of the Chairman;

o Falsely accused the Title IX coordinator of lying to the Board;

o Complained about the Notice of Formal Complaint that the coordinator had issued as required by law; and

o Falsely accused the University’s independent outside Title IX counsel of bias and conflict of interest.

I am not commenting on the merits or demerits of the Title IX claim. But, as the Trustees agreed in February, referring the matter to the Title IX coordinator to follow the normal course is the right (and legally required) thing to do. Impeding that process is not. The Chairman’s recent actions place the University and the Board in a perilous position.

The current direction is not sustainable. I am walking down a dark road with no light ahead. The future of BJU requires the Chairman and the President to work together. It is not happening now, and I can’t see it happening in the future. Normal communication and transparency must exist between the Chairman and the President in order for the University to function daily. Right now, things are dysfunctional, and our working relationship is irreparably broken.

Urgency demands that a decision must be made regarding the relationship between the Chairman and me if we are going to move the institutional mission forward.

Therefore, I cannot continue to work in a relationship with Dr. John Lewis as the Chairman of the Board. I serve at the pleasure of the Board, and I am willing and confident that I can continue to work with this Board, but I request that Dr. Lewis step down from his position as Chairman and off the BJU Executive Committee at or before the March 29, 2023, Board meeting, to be effective immediately.

I’m not oblivious to the effect my decision may have on the University’s students, employees, and executives, but the current situation is unsustainable for the University, its mission, its personnel, and my family. If Dr. Lewis remains the Chairman or a member of the Executive Committee, I am prepared to tender my resignation as President of Bob Jones University on March 31, 2023, to be effective immediately.

Respectfully,

Steve Pettit

Dear John and Trustees,

Terry and I got home yesterday evening from our time away. I am responding briefly to the letter sent by the Chairman yesterday to make sure that the critical decision before us doesn’t get lost in a back-and-forth about the specific reasons that led me to reach the conclusion of my March 21 letter.

The bottom line, and the decision before you is this: I cannot continue to work in a relationship with Dr. John Lewis as Chairman of the Board, and I request that he step down from his position as Chairman and off the Executive Committee at or before the March 29, 2023, Board meeting. If Dr. Lewis remain the Chairman of the Board or a member of the Executive Committee, I am prepared to tender my resignation as President on March 31, 2023, to be effective immediately.

You may agree with some, all, or none of my reasons for reaching that conclusion. But either way, the fact remains: you will have to make a choice between two possible outcomes.

I pray that God will give us wisdom in the days ahead.

Respectfully,

Steve

dgszweda wrote:

To be honest these were the same issues we faced when I went to school there 30 years ago.

David, seriously, you want to equate the removal of the hats requirement to the current apparently minimal dress standards of today?

I know we disagree, but I think you are reaching with your comparisons. In other words, a false equivalency.

I think at the end of the day the concerns from the FBFI that John Lewis and BJ III took up were magnified as greater than they really were

Let's be clear here. The concerns we brought up weren't news to Dr. Lewis or Dr. Bob. The BJU board was active and expressing the same concerns to Steve and the rest of the BJU administration before the FBFI submitted their letter. No doubt the letter added weight to their concerns. But it isn't as if they suddenly woke up and said, "Wow, we never knew, let's take up these concerns now."

Some of this was a lot around difference in philosophy.

This is it in a nutshell. Should the school follow Northland's trajectory or maintain its long-held separatist philosophy? It is a laugh for Steve to refer to it in his letter to the board as a "new" direction. I think Steve was speaking hyperbolically there. His direction was the new direction.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Don Johnson wrote: This is it in a nutshell. Should the school follow Northland's trajectory or maintain its long-held separatist philosophy? It is a laugh for Steve to refer to it in his letter to the board as a "new" direction. I think Steve was speaking hyperbolically there. His direction was the new direction.

Well, Don, the ball is in your court now. Cultural fundamentalists like yourself either need to provide the student numbers to support the school or you will need to shut down / significantly downsize the university.

If you can't put up the student numbers to sustain cultural fundamentalism at BJU, where will you recommend your students attend? PCC?

What are they? I reject the term. It is simply a slur coined by the worldly to demean faithful biblical Christianity.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

The FRFI is a group of some 400 individuals, the majority of whom are pastors, who have gained membership in the FBFI by paying a fee and subscribing to a magazine. The letter in question was from the board of the FBFI and not from the group as a whole.

"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan

I'm sure he's not involved in this:

Executive Committee meetings have been moved to Bob Jones Ill’s residence.

I'm not quite sure exactly why the trustee's alleged comments to an alumnus about women's clothing at BJU became a Title IX issue--I'm assuming it was public enough comment to be seen as creating a "hostile environment"--but if indeed Dr. Lewis is working to suppress the investigation, the man is playing with fire.

If what he noted is true, I don't blame Dr. Pettit for getting out of there before federal investigators come to visit, and I wouldn't fault him if he actually provides whatever proof he's got of what he wrote to those same investigators. He may even be legally required to do so.

One side note; I looked at pictures of "Bruinettes" in their uniforms, and IMO they're lovely and modest. The bodice line and arm-holes are both created to allow freedom of movement without revealing what's underneath. Somebody did their work pretty well, IMO.

I can't speak to what the young ladies wear on campus (Ron?), but I think a degree of understanding needs to be had. More or less, affordable clothing for young women these days is increasingly made with nickel an hour (OK, I exaggerate a bit) labor in Bangladesh, and manufacturers do indeed compensate for a lack of skill in their factories with an abundance of spandex. So until BJU really gets their fashion program up & running (and teaches their students how to sew well), they're really stuck with what's available in the stores.

I'm all for modesty, and I encourage my own kids to consider clothing with more natural ease, to use a "belt" for pants and the like, but there are really limited options for young ladies these days.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Don,

This is also false equivalency:

[quote]This is it in a nutshell. Should the school follow Northland's trajectory or maintain its long-held separatist philosophy? It is a laugh for Steve to refer to it in his letter to the board as a "new" direction. I think Steve was speaking hyperbolically there. His direction was the new direction.[/quote]

The school was nowhere heading down the path of Northland 2.0. The dress is a smokescreen and is the pinnacle of cultural fundamentalism. This was a fight at the board level, and Steve was somewhat caught in it. These "things" that were done were approved by the board. This is a battle with a segment of the FBFI in which BJ III sits on both the FBFI and BJU board and a small segment, but controlling segment of the BJU board who would like to see things the board agreed upon rolled back and they leveraged the renewal of Dr. Pettit's contract to try to force a way. Both John Lewis and BJ III view this as an attack, they have dug in and believe they are carrying the high ground and they seek to control the situation through questionable means. People can complain about Positive BJU all they want, but the fact of the matter is that it has 7,000 active alumni that is probably representing 20,000 or more alumni. Positive BJU is who are paying to keep the school open because most of the current student's parents are represented in the group and we are paying the 10's of thousands of dollars every year to pay for it. The people signing the FBFI letter and the people on the board may have grandkids or great grandkids, but they are far removed from actively supporting the school generally and keeping it open today.

I am less concerned about the school going back and making changes to appease people. What really concerns me is the approach the board is taking. It just screams all of the bad aspects of the fundamentalism in the past. Do things behind closed doors, don't bring it out in the open, don't attack the "man of God".....

For most students, Dr. Pettit brought a fresh air that was not present under BJ III or Jr. A president who cared about the students because he injected himself into their daily lives. Sitting with them to eat, hanging out in the Den, going to games, just putting an arm around them and praying with them. The school was trying to teach the students not how to separate yourselves from the world as a sign of holiness, but how to be holy while living in today's world. The kids are less concerned about the modesty making them more holy (most don't find the dress inmodest or making them have impure hearts), but are more creeped out by 80 year old men taking pictures of immodest girls and putting them in slide shows to talk about in secret meetings.

I think both sides could have done a much better job at sitting down and working on this then digging into trenches. There is no win here, only a lost.

dgszweda wrote: This is a battle with a segment of the FBFI in which BJ III sits on both the FBFI and BJU board and a small segment, but controlling segment of the BJU board who would like to see things the board agreed upon rolled back and they leveraged the renewal of Dr. Pettit's contract to try to force a way. Both John Lewis and BJ III view this as an attack, they have dug in and believe they are carrying the high ground and they seek to control the situation through questionable means.

Dave, I think this is just so skewed from reality... You are peddling a false narrative. I am privy to some aspects of it. Your sources have no idea. I have had testimony on some other aspects of it from people I trust who are unimpeachable. Their testimony doesn't accord with what you say. I'm not going to go point by point on this, but I will say that the picture being painted just isn't accurate.

I hope more of it will eventually come out, and in the meantime I hope that BJU weathers this storm. I am praying that the Lord preserves the school and its ministry.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

"Executive Committee meetings have been moved to Bob Jones Ill’s residence."

The Chancellor ultimately reports to the President. If one cannot support one's supervisor, integrity says one should resign. Hosting those who are opposing one's boss is quite a different thing.

With respect to Dr. John Lewis's actions:

"The arrogance of power is a dangerous thing. It can cause a person to forget his duty to others and lead him to abuse the authority that has been given him." - Bob Jones Sr.

T Howard wrote: The cultural fundamentalists are willing to kill BJU to keep BJU true to its cultural fundamentalist roots. The question remains: Can these cultural fundamentalists summon enough like-minded parents / students to BJU to keep the school afloat when the non-cultural fundamentalist parents / students go elsewhere?

First, the issues Pettit raised in his resignation letter were none of these so-called cultural issues. He is leaving due to his allegations of unethical behavior by the chairman.

Second, your question actually cuts both ways. If BJU continues to stray from his conservative roots, how does it distinguish itself among all its new competitors to maintain students? There are tons of conservative evangelical schools out there. Why go to BJU when you could go to Boyce, or Cedarville, or Masters, or Liberty, or any other number of schools where you don't have deal with these so-called cultural issues?

T Howard wrote: If you can't put up the student numbers to sustain cultural fundamentalism at BJU, where will you recommend your students attend? PCC?

If you are not KJVO and don't want to send your kids to a KJVO school, where exactly should we send them? I can think of one maybe two other places but the choices are slim.

AndyE wrote: If you are not KJVO and don't want to send your kids to a KJVO school, where exactly should we send them? I can think of one maybe two other places but the choices are slim.

For parents who are musically conservative and do not want their kids to be influenced towards contemporary worship, etc., Maranatha Baptist University or International Bible College and Seminary would be good choices to consider.

I'd assume whole board has to vote on a new president. Wonder if any person would satisfy enough people on the board to get elected.

Many raise the question of openness and transparency, implying that for a board to have closed door meetings is somehow wrong.

What board could function properly with all meetings open to the public? Many matters must come before a board that require private discussions. Those on the board should honour board confidentiality, as these matters work their way through the process. If someone can't work within that framework, they shouldn't serve on a board.

In this case, someone leaked documents from board meetings to the agitators at BJU Positive. Whoever that is betrayed a trust. Hopefully that person is no longer a member of the board.

In the leaked letter from Steve to the board, many allegations were made about improper procedures. There are accountability mechanisms that will sort this out. The letter shouldn't have been made public, but it is out there and reveals part of the story. I think everyone should take a deep breath and wait for the accountability mechanisms to deal with the allegations. There is also, always, another side to the story. None of us are privy to all the details, and we aren't part of the solution. Speculation is fruitless, and that is where many of the claims made in this thread and other places land -- pure speculation, nothing more.

I've always liked Steve, since the days we were students together, but I think he has made some errors in this controversy. I wish him well, but I'm not happy with some of his choices.

Finally, as to board majorities, and so forth. One thing missed in the discussion is that the majority of the board has made their will plain when offering Steve a renewed contract and in the subsequent appointments to the board. This isn't simply a matter of a rogue minority, the majority of the board have been voting together.

I wish the board well as they seek to recover from all these machinations. I know several of them personally and am fully confident in their integrity.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3