The previous post in this series is here.
The following are culled from discussions with faculty and staff at several Christian colleges and universities.
You know your Christian college or university has gone or is moving Left when:
1) Faculty close their office doors to discuss with other faculty the political changes (to the Left) on campus.
2) People are generally a bit nervous about speaking up to buck the trend, at all levels, from newbie faculty all the way through the hierarchy. In a world where a Left-leaning fellow like Larry Summers at Harvard can speak the plain truth and be pilloried for it, it’s pretty clear that no one is safe. Summers eventually had to resign, too.
3) You can walk through the faculty parking lot and count Right leaning bumper stickers on the fingers of one hand, but you see large numbers of Left leaning ones. (This doesn’t necessarily mean that the Left is a majority… but it means they’re a LOT more vocal about it.)
4) Students start forming groups to promote conservatism and traditional values (because they see so little defense of them on campus). And if no faculty member will stop and talk to such students at booths displaying literature promoting such values, that’s a bad sign, too, not because that proves there are no faculty who agree, but because faculty may fear being seen to agree…. or even being interested. A corollary: faculty who are considering joining the facebook group of conservative students pause for a moment, and count the cost.
5) Every chapel speaker for two weeks straight seems to come from the Left.
6) It is always completely safe, in public discourse (meetings, workshops, councils, etc.), to express your fidelity to the aims of diversity activism, but not to express your commitment to working politically towards a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade, or for a Right to Life constitutional amendment.
7) You feel that it’s safer to “feel people out in person” before sending them a document expressing conservative or libertarian values. On the other hand, people from the Left constantly send email to the entire campus expressing their point of view, and appear to feel perfectly safe in doing so.
8) Official college publications begin using the phrase “speech codes” in a non-pejorative manner.
9) Your campus has “justice weeks” in which there is no mention of abortion; anti-Semitism’s rise in the West; out-of-wedlock birth leading to fatherless children (with the inevitably higher rates of crime, time in prison, poverty, etc.); Muslim treatment of women (in Western nations, not just “Islamic” ones); the responsibility of society to care for military veterans and their families, especially disabled veterans, and the families of killed soldiers (a scandal if there ever was one). Huge injustices all, but somehow never in view during campus “justice week.”
10) High level administrators try to suppress student political activism towards the Right. Corollary: the administrators may be forced to apologize via legal action by the students.
11) The cafeteria goes “green” and refuses to give customers “to go” containers even as an extra cost item. There are recycling bins all over campus, but not enough trash cans… or at least, they’re someplace distant from the recycling bins. The cafeteria doesn’t supply trays anymore (to save water), so you have to juggle plate, beverages, utensils, soup bowls, etc., the hard way. Corollary: the cafeteria carpet has more stains than it used to.
The next post in this series is here.
