Bob Jones University Enters a New Era

I think one of the crying needs of the present day church is well-trained leadership. The military academies are institutions that train for leadership, part of their training includes rigorous discipline and a chain of command. The way BJU was set up in the past was modeled after the military academies (loosely speaking), being known as the “West Point” of Christian schools (or terms like this). My perception is that the kind of training we received at BJU did well in training for leadership. That isn’t to say that every individual who went there got the message, or were spiritually exactly where they should be, nor was BJU perfect in all it did. But even folks who attended without graduating were affected by the training. BJU produced leaders. Today? I think it is less. I think the overall changes, not just the rules/authority structure, but including that, are tending towards followership rather than leadership.

I don’t think BJU should “never change” but I think the changes need to be less accommodating of the easy style of modern living and in the direction of expecting more out of students, not less. Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. That’s my view.

Bert, Just a quick final word. Sighing is both obnoxious and unhelpful. If you are disappointed, it should be with the statement you made. You want to declare 18 year olds to be adults, but then you object when someone takes you at your word and compares them to adults. You object, not because 80 year olds aren’t adults, but because it doesn’t fit your narrative. This 80 year old has no memory problems. He is probably more active than you are. Certainly more active than I am. He retired last year after 50 years of running a business that required both physical and mental labor. He still goes to the gym every day at 6:00 a.m. as he has for decades, except he used to go at 5 a.m. to get to work early. And I could tell the same story about a 48 year old. Or a 30 year old.

You made a bad statement and it was easily demonstrable to be false. Adults don’t always know what they need to attend. It is well known and examples could be multiplied all over the place.

Regarding class attendance, the fact is that there are a good many professors who do require class attendance. Here are a couple of example:

https://ctl.iupui.edu/media/ca2bbca7-506d-4553-970b-acc34d22177c/KkHf9A…

http://english.illinoisstate.edu/kalmbach/351/oldwebs/Morton/samplesyll…

As you can see, these very non-fundamentalist professors believe that class attendance matters and they are willing to punish students who don’t come. And there are many more examples. For these professors, the consequence isn’t simply missed material. There is an actual demerit consequence. The point is that requiring class attendance isn’t a Christian fundamentalist thing. And having consequences for missing is not a Christian fundamentalist thing.

The idea that a demerit system infantalizes people is mostly silly. Not entirely, but mostly. It is really no different than a scale of graded consequences at a jobs or in the legal system. Virtually every organization has some sort of demerit system, for everything from being late to being incompetent. Getting a written warning for something is not a natural consequence of anything and it is not infantalizing. But it is frequently used. It’s a different form of a demerit. Or consider traffic violations. Paying a fine is not a natural consequence of going over the posted limit. But there is a graded demerit system in the form of dollars and points based on the amount of speed over the limit and the number of offenses in the past. Does anyone think that is infantalizing? Or is it just when a fundamentalist organization does it?

At the end of the day, we are a bit far afield. However, the idea of organizations having rules or regulations for the good order of the organization and for the accomplishment of its purpose is not really a fundamentalist thing or a Christian thing. All organizations have them. If a person doesn’t like them, then don’t be a part of the organization. I spent a fair amount of time at BJU back in the day, and frankly, the rules weren’t that big of a deal. They were easy enough to keep, and usually easy enough to get away with not keeping some of them. It was a mark of maturity. Typically, it seems it was the immature students who complained the most. Perhaps that hasn’t changed.

I think we can and should set aside this whole discussion about people with handicaps or mental defect, because the last time I checked, BJU didn’t have a ton of those students. Furthermore, we are talking in general terms about the general population of Christians.

That arose because the claim has been made that 18 year olds and up are adults and should be treated that way. My point is that that is not actually true in all cases.

I have never argued that once a person reaches a set age (18), they are magically adults. What I am saying is that by the time someone has reached 18 (or is old enough to start college/grad school, in Greg’s daughters’ cases), they should be mature enough that they do not need the fine-grained rules that BJU have put in place in the past. Furthermore, if they have been shielded from life’s consequences (for whatever reason), then they should be exposed to the school of hard knocks. Yes, some people won’t be ready…I get that, but if you’re going to send an eighteen year old to college, then they should not need the kind of close supervision of their life that BJU required.

Then I don’t know how you disagree with me, aside from the idea that BJU was some kind of close supervision. I don’t think it was.

I guess what I am saying is that by the time someone reaches college, they should already know “how to live”.

Okay, perhaps. But what if they don’t? I say let’s teach them.

You and Don and others seem to think that putting good rules into effect will create good Christians. I don’t think that’s right or even achievable.

I have never said anything of the sort. I have no idea where you got this from.

[Bert Perry]

Andy, the point is simple; even though BJU can say they’re “better than average” and “almost as good as the worst Big Ten school” (Nebraska at 66.8% graduation), that still leaves a third of students without their college fund, without a few years of their life, and without a degree. Moreover, the deans at BJU (and all over) know exactly who left in good academic standing, and who did not. If they’re not determining who has a reasonable chance (say 50% of graduating and who does not by looking at the demographics of those on academic probation, they’re saying “I’m fine with taking tens of thousands of dollars from students and giving them bupkus.” Major.Moral.Failure, no?

Larry, the sighs are DESERVED because you know very well the very clear, objective differences between an 80 year old and an 18 year old. You should be flat out embarrassed to be diverting attention to such things.

And IUPUI and Illinois State? I’m sorry, Larry, but I grew up in Indiana, and IUPUI serves as a school for those who don’t get to go to Bloomington or West Lafayette. A step up from community college, but definitely not a first or second tier school. Illinois State is predominantly a teachers’ college—decent graduation rates despite high acceptance rates, but ahem—maybe a teachers’ college will be more accepting of constant taking of attendance?

You are making my case, really, that taking attendance constantly is a refuge predominantly of less selective schools. Like BJU. Anyone who compares BJU to the service academies, where acceptance rates are around 10% and mean ACT scores are around 28, needs to get their head examined. Here is what can be said about BJU in terms of selectivity.

Yes, Andy, it’s fair to say that BJU is accepting a lot of students who really don’t belong there. #Data. And those students who really don’t belong there are paying for it with their college funds and future opportunities.

Here are some attendance policies for MIT’s Concert Choir, Standford, Furman University, and Clemson University. You can see by these few examples that it isn’t just the “lower tiered schools” that expect their students to be in attendance.

http://web.mit.edu/21m401/www/attendance.shtml

https://undergrad.stanford.edu/academic-planning/academic-policies/atte…

http://www.furman.edu/academics/academics/academic-resources/Pages/regu…

https://www.registrar.clemson.edu/publicat/prevcats/0001/sections/aca_r…

Based on your reasoning, because the police can’t catch all speeders, and not all speeders are punished equitably we should get rid of speeding laws. Also because the drivers have been legally declared eligible to drive then they should be able to determine on their own what is a safe speed and so we should therefore get rid of all speeding laws. Try explaining this to your local police.

There will always be rules and laws to follow even in a church. It won’t matter whether your 1, 18, 50, or 100. And yes, Larry’s illustration of the 80 year old who didn’t know what he was supposed to attend is an example of why ALL adults including 18 year olds and 80 years have to be told what to do sometimes.

But the reality is you’ll never be convinced.

Our church doesn’t police what music an 18 yr old woman listens to, how she does her hair, whether her skirt is below the knee, when she goes to bed, when she wakes up, what movies she watches, when (or whether) she does her bible reading, etc. We preach and persuade church members to abide by Biblical standards of morality, and leave them to obey (or disobey) as they see fit. If a person is involved in some sort of public and obvious sin, then we’ll step in. If a problem comes to light, then we’ll have to address it. But, we don’t go prying into people’s lives to ensure conformity to an external standard. They’re individual priests before God, and that’s on them.

Some Christian universities … have a rather different approach.

1. The MIT link is an extracurricular activity, not classwork. As the dad of five kids in choirs, I can explain to you why this one is important if you like.

2. The Stanford link is a recommendation, not a statement that attendance will be taken.

3. Furman’s link, like Stanford’s, is a recommendation that leaves professors, not the university, to determine absence policy. It also is not a requirement that attendance will be taken, or demerits issued.

4. The Clemson link does not set a requirement that attendance be taken, either, but rather leaves that with individual professors.

I’m not debating the point these links make, which is that it’s important to attend class and contact professors if you’re going to have to miss. That’s basic adult behavior, and I’ve stated as much on this thread. What I’m disputing is the need to provide a demerit system if one misses chapel or class, which is precisely what BJU has. They even have assigned seats for chapel to make it easy to figure out if someone skipped, and who it was. I have to wonder if a coed Michal has snuck an idol into the auditorium to help her David at times….

I don’t contest the idea that a Christian college can, and should, take a part in the process of discipleship. I can even point out, and did, that any college, Christian or secular, can hardly help having either a beneficial or deleterious effect in that regard.

I am simply saying that it is my belief that a fair number of the rules at BJU, including but not limited to the attendance policy, actually have a deleterious effect on discipleship, not a helpful one, for a number of reasons. It’s better than it used to be, thank God, but they’ve still got a long way to go.

Bert, you might want to reread the MIT link. Twice in the policy it mentions grading. It is a class. In addition, each school says students are required to attend classes, but the teachers are to decide the discipline for failure to attend. BJU and others do it differently. So what? They are all telling the students what to do.

BTW, churches and employers don’t necessarily have “rules” regarding the private life, but they still have rules (like required choir attendance to be allowed to sing specials, arrival times for nursery workers, etc). Then again, God gave some specific commands including church discipline.

Some of BJU’s changes have been good and some bad. If you like the changes then come here or send someone here. If you don’t like all of them, then you have a big decision to make.

Required attendance is a very minor issue in this discussion.

I know that, but Bert made it one of his talking points so I found the proof that what he considers a tier 1 schools have an attendance policies. Actually my original concern with my original post is the hypocrisy of having a rule book that is clearly not enforced in some areas. For years, we’ve heard where the church is full of hypocrisy and those of us with stricter standards were hypocrites and we needed to purge that (as though someone can see my heart). The Millenials supposedly hate hypocrisy, but they willing accept, go along with, and perpetuate the hypocrisy of having a rule that isn’t enforced.

I’m often reminded of a Reader’s Digest article several years back where the tolerant son finally decided to go home and spend time with his intolerant, “right” leaning father. The son admitted in the article that what he discovered was that dad was more tolerant than he was. Is that what is happening here, the ones crying for no hypocrisy are the most hypocritical of all?

It strikes me that BJU President Steve Pettit is a 1978 graduate of The Citadel:

http://www.bju.edu/about/university-leadership/president/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Pettit

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For those not familiar with The Citadel ( http://www.citadel.edu/root/ ), it is one of six “United States Senior Military Colleges” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senior_Military_College ), which functionally operate very much in the manner of West Point and the other federal service academies. For example, the SMCs must:

“Under Army regulation an SMC must meet certain criteria:

• Bachelor’s degree must be granted.
• All physically fit male/female students must take courses in military training. Exceptions to this requirement include foreign nationals, prior-service personnel, and students specifically excused by a professor of military science.
• Outside ROTC, the school must establish a corps of cadets in which all students wear military uniforms. The corps of cadets involves a military environment in which the students live constantly, not just during the school day, and in which the students are subject to military discipline.
• The SMC must have as an objective the development of character through military training and the regulation of cadet conduct according to principles of military discipline (a cadet code of conduct).
• The SMC must maintain military standards similar to those of the federal service academies.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senior_Military_College

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What strikes me is that it is (arguably) under Pettit’s administration that BJU’s rules have been “loosened” or “relaxed” compared to the rules of BJU’s past.

Pettit’s college years were at a military college which rivals West Point or Annapolis in the strictness of its rules and regulations, and yet it is under his administration that the rules at BJU have seen much revision.

Is there anything to make of that?

Don, you and I have radically different ideas as to what BJU should be and do; thank you for the clarification, though. I appreciate it.

Larry, I don’t think we are as far apart as it may have seemed at times.

Michelle, you said:

Based on your reasoning, because the police can’t catch all speeders, and not all speeders are punished equitably we should get rid of speeding laws. Also because the drivers have been legally declared eligible to drive then they should be able to determine on their own what is a safe speed and so we should therefore get rid of all speeding laws. Try explaining this to your local police.

I don’t think that this is what Bert is saying, and it’s a false dichotomy as well. A person can insist that the 45 MPH speed limit is too low (or too high) for good reasons and not be calling for the abolition of all speed limits. It’s sloppy thinking to summarize things that way.

I’m pretty sure that Bert and I are in agreement with TylerR’s ‘Church vs. University’ post from earlier today. It’s just that simple.

And finally, yes, I don’t think anyone is seriously in favor of abolishing attendance taking. If BJU wants to do that, then fine, I don’t have a problem with it. I think that we’re wrangling with just how much authority BJU should be allowed to exercise over the students in non-academic [outside of class] contexts.

Not getting at individual classes at top schools having attendance policies, but rather the school as a whole requiring top professors to take attendance each class and then issue demerits according to how late a student was, Michelle.

And if you think, you might figure out why the university choir might be the class that MIT students tend to skip, and why that might be one of very few classes with an actual attendance requirement. Maybe it’s the “easy” class”, and they’ve got a couple of difficult ones, too?

And speeding? It’s actually another great example of how much better things can be when one simply treats people like adults; let’s just say I spent the summer of 1989 in Germany. The Autobahn is actually quite a bit calmer, as a rule, than most interstate highways, and their highway death rates are (4000 among ~ 80 million vs. 33000 among 320 million) about half as high as those of the U.S.

The speeding illustration is not perfect but is adequate to make my point. Over and over, we’ve been told in this discussion that at 18 you are an adult because the law says you are one and therefore you should have to be told what to do and anybody who sets regulations for your living like BJU does is wrong. So to my illustration, I applied that same philosophy that we should not be telling these college students what to do to driving Just because you have a driver’s license doesn’t mean you are ready to decide what is safe. The laws will do that for you. Just because you are 18, doesn’t mean you are really an adult in the true sense of the word. Also one of the points in this discussion is that BJU and other entities were wrong because (supposedly) it couldn’t/didn’t enforce the punishment equally every time. Again, speeding laws and all other laws are never equally enforced, but we don’t get rid of them. My illustration was to point out the ridiculousness of assuming that a college aged student doesn’t need regulations (even attendance) in a school setting or that we don’t enforce or have them if we don’t have perfect enforcement. If the news is any indication of the “adulthood” qualifications of our college aged individuals, than I don’t understand what it means to be an adult. Riots, rape, drugs, protests, etc doesn’t seem to be adult behavior. Merriam-Webster defines adult as: “fully developed and mature :grown-up.”

Bert, you really think that Concert Choir is an easy course to skip so they take it for an easy course? That’s why I was in the band, flute choir, and orchestra. NOT. (BJU didn’t grade these when I went through. I don’t know what they do now.) What was evident in the links was that each school expected the students to attend and that each school expected the professors to enforce that expectation in some manner. So it was a school wide policy, just the enforcement varied. Other schools choose to do things the same across the board. No getting confused on the expectations at those schools.

I too have been in Europe on the road and in the trains and subways. Most people there travel via train and subway, not automobile, even between cities and countries. So of course the traffic rules can be more generous.

I’ve seen enough in this discussion thread to know that arguing with you guys is like arguing with a wall.