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Patrick Henry College—God’s Harvard?: Grayson’s Story, Part One

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Homeschoolers U

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Grayson” is a pseudonym specifically chosen by the author.

Part One

One thing I’ve learned over the past few years is that you cannot truly judge an experience until it’s behind you.

It’s been over a year since I graduated from Patrick Henry College, and during that time I’ve gotten married, moved away from the Northern Virginia area, and entered graduate school. To say that my time away from PHC has resulted in a detached objectivity toward my undergraduate experience is surely an exaggeration; no one ever achieves pure objectivity toward an event so closely tied up with their most formative years. But distance has a way of putting things in perspective, and after time away from PHC I feel prepared to give what is at least an honest (if not infallible) view of the academic atmosphere at the tiny school that calls itself “God’s Harvard.”

I am not interested in offering my perspective on the non-academic aspects of life at PHC. Other students have already done so, and the remarkable similarities in many of their accounts have convinced me that my own social and spiritual experiences on campus were less isolated than they felt when I was a sophomore. Instead, I wish to address a discomforting trend that I’ve noticed in many of the stories submitted to Homeschoolers Anonymous. Most of the students whose accounts I’ve read (whether their attitude toward PHC is negative or positive) acknowledge that PHC’s academic program is intellectually rigorous. They may dislike the spiritual or political homogeneity on campus, but somehow their academic experiences mitigate (or at least balance) those negative factors. PHC, or so the story goes, is deeply flawed – but boy, are its classes tough.

I must confess that I find these accounts bewildering.

Of course, no student can offer a perspective from any major other than their own, but I find it difficult to believe that the quality of instruction varies so dramatically from major to major. Maybe it does – but if so, PHC is dealing with a radical imbalance between its political and classical liberal arts hemispheres. Like every other student at PHC, I completed its ponderous core curriculum which included classes from several of PHC’s most celebrated history and politics professors. A recent Facebook conversation called into question the rigor of Dr. Robert Spinney’s United States History class, but I respectfully disagreed. Classes like Dr. Spinney’s US History or Dr. Mark Mitchell’s Freedom’s Foundations (both student favorites) were objectively challenging and thought-provoking. No class is perfect, but theirs were the kinds of classes that have stayed with me since graduation. I have a feeling that most PHC graduates—even the most disaffected—would agree with me with respect to those two classes.

The point I wish to make is that classes like Dr. Spinney’s or Dr. Mitchell’s do not characterize the academic experience at PHC. Theirs are the classes visiting students are most likely to observe, but their almost cultish popularity (another interesting phenomenon that numerous students have noted) obscures a majority of academically mediocre—and in some cases abysmal—core classes. I am under no delusion that freshman or sophomore classes across the country have a universal wow factor, but the elite universities to which PHC likes to compare itself typically manage to maintain at least a measure of respectability. There are classes in PHC’s core curriculum (and beyond into its majors) that I can only laugh about in retrospect. To provide an analysis of these classes would probably sound distinctly uncharitable, and would grant them a level of seriousness to which they never aspired.

These classes—along with the mediocre majority—are the ones visiting students will probably not encounter on their overnight tours.

When you are a young stripling of a college, it is much easier to use phrases like “Classical college,” “God’s Harvard,” or “academically challenging” than to actually deliver an academic atmosphere that lives up to the astronomical hype PHC enjoys in homeschooling and Christian communities. For a college so young, PHC has achieved a remarkable amount of marketing success. To someone like me who grew up homeschooled, the “classical” moniker was enormously attracting. A classical education, PHC students hear over and over for four years, is an elite luxury enjoyed historically by only the most erudite people. At every convocation and every Faith and Reason lecture, the verbiage is the same: You are receiving a rare form of education that will prepare you to be the best of the best. You are. You are.

Around junior year, of course, the rhetoric becomes less and less comforting. Students begin to realize that the real world is approaching with inexorable speed, and that few people outside of PHC’s Georgian brick architecture care what “classical” means. The fact that a PHC diploma is a certificate of membership in an elite but largely imaginary caste of society becomes increasingly irrelevant as the doors beyond graduation begin to close to its non-regionally-accredited degree. The same history classes that looked so shiny on Admitted Students Day have conferred the realization that classical educations, historically, have been reserved primarily for white, upper class males with significant inherited wealth. By the end of four years, the sense of limitless opportunity that once accompanied the “classical” tagline has been replaced by the realization that a classical education is inherently limiting.

No one, I think, experiences this realization more profoundly than Literature students. That is not to say that every Literature student comes to this realization—in fact, many of my English peers probably disagree with my assessment. Others do not. Literature, after all, is about broadness. Not in a superficial sense, of course—but the act of reading is an inherently broadening act. Studying literature forces the reader to empathize with people from diverse time periods and backgrounds with whom he or she may not actually agree. It opens the reader to a multiplicity of personal beliefs and opinions that are all inescapably authentic and honest despite the fact that most of them contradict each other. It is in this mysterious, impalpable intersection between diverse personal experience and abstract truth that the English major finds meaning in what will otherwise prove to be a life without high-paying jobs and social prominence.

The difficulty is that PHC’s classical education simply does not lend itself to the kind of broadness that ought to characterize an English education.

When I first met Dr. Steven Hake (the chair of PHC’s Classical Liberal Arts Department and director of its Literature major) on a campus visit, he assured me that “We read everything.” This, as I came to find out, is not even remotely true. What he meant by “everything” was that PHC prides itself on its willingness to read philosophers like Nietzsche. What he did not mean by “everything” is that PHC enthusiastically explores many significant literary works written after 1960. Granted, there are the inevitable forays into C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, and sheepish, half-hearted expeditions into the jungles of contemporary feminist or queer theory. What PHC entirely lacks, however, is an open-minded willingness to engage with contemporary works of literature.

As a homeschooled senior in high school raised in an insulated classical environment, the prospect of PHC’s self-avowed chronological bias toward a very narrow definition of the Western canon did not bother me as much as it should have. As a graduate student several years later, I compare the books I read in college to the books my wife read in college with no small degree of sadness. Her list, as an English major at another small private school, includes books like White Noise by Don DeLillo, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, and Beloved by Toni Morrison—along with Nietzsche and all the other Western classics I read at PHC.

Her list also includes a level of cultural diversity that I never encountered as a Literature major. I read Socrates and Plato; she read Socrates and Plato and Lao-tze and Confucius, along with a number of post-colonial (a term you will not encounter often at PHC) authors like Salmon Rushdie, Jean Toomer, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. The closest I ever came to a literary treatment of colonialism was Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which I read in PHC’s now defunct Distance Learning program. Incidentally, the colonial implications of the novel never even came up. (I think the going consensus was that Heart of Darkness is about man’s inherent sinfulness—an absurdly reductionist interpretation that nevertheless characterizes a substantial portion of PHC’s literary “scholarship.”)

At PHC, the acknowledged assumption is that anything outside the established Western canon is of dubious merit, a “guilty until proven innocent” mentality that severely limits intellectual exploration.

Part Two >

We Were Sold a Bill of Goods: Senator Dancergurl’s Story

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Homeschoolers U

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Senator Dancergurl” is a pseudonym specifically chosen by the author.

The thing to remember about American higher education is that it’s a business.

The goal of colleges and universities isn’t student success or an excellent education, it’s profit.  Of course there are wonderful, helpful people that work in higher ed (I’m one of them).  At the end of the day, however, full time enrollment numbers and meeting budget goals will always trump student satisfaction. Higher education as a whole is a capitalistic enterprise.

Patrick Henry is marketed as a different breed of college. It’s not Liberty (tighter admissions, more student rules), it’s not Bob Jones (fewer rules and denim skirts) and it’s not your local state university. It’s like Yale, only Christian.  And not as old or prestigious.

A quick glance at the student body of PHC highlights just how different it is. The student body is depicted as a group of responsible, articulate young adults being sharpened to shape and lead a nation back from the brink of disaster spiritually, socially and fiscally.  Students are expected to have it all together and to reflect a perfect image. There are no crazy parties, no premarital sex and no inebriation. Students are bound to a higher calling.

My experience at PHC isn’t vastly different from others.  I decided to attend because, as a conservative 18 year old, I wasn’t interested in binge drinking or sleeping around. I was sold the misconception that all non-Christian schools were party schools and that the only way to avoid all the sinful influences was to attend a school that embraced Christian values.

PHC appealed to my pride.  I spent the better part of my teenage years creating an amazingly perfect, Christian exterior. I obeyed my parents and followed all the rules. These actions inevitably brought me no peace.  But my carefully cultivated image made me the perfect PHC candidate: white, middle to upper class, Christian and Republican. You will not find a PHC student that does not fit at least one of these categories and only a few don’t fall under at least two or more.

Rules were a massive purveyor of brand management.  Sure, many believed it was unBiblical to drink, smoke and have sex, but these rules were (and still are) widely used to attract a certain demograph of student and exude a squeaky clean Christian image.  What falls under the guise of Biblical guidance is also convenient for recruitment and administrators used that to their advantage.

Administrators also tout the “no government funding” rule as an example of their Godliness. The reality is PHC would be required to offer more services to students (ADA services, financial aid assistance and following the Clery Act to name a few) thus costing them more money.  This fact has been spun as an exciting policy to students, when the reality is it’s harmful and discriminatory.

Further, administration actively lied about campus safety and security to keep in line with brand management.  The annual campus security report regularly detailed no crime on campus, including no burglaries or sexual assaults. Because these were not reported to the police it was as if they did not happen.  (Indeed, PHC’s fear of police involvement is well documented.)

Perhaps the greatest travesty for students, however, is PHC’s lack of regional accreditation. Administration continually downplays this fact, however, this essentially means that PHC is swindling students out of a four year degree.  Transferring out midway is difficult without losing credits and pursuing further education after graduation usually means retaking several (if not all) general education requirements.

None of these things are particularly surprising or different from any institution of higher education. As I said, higher education is a business and businesses need profit. The problem that I have is that PHC was presented to us as different. It was special. We were sold a bill of goods.

In the end, the sad truth is that caveat emptor applies even to the Christianity brand.

To the Students of PHC: Talitha’s Story

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Homeschoolers U

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Talitha” is a pseudonym.

I came to Patrick Henry College as a girl with big dreams and a go-getter attitude. Maybe my dreams were too big, but I was prepared to work hard to get where I wanted to be. After surviving a life of poverty, I realized that nothing comes free in life. During my high school years, I never knew if I was going to have food on the table the next day. My experiences with being low-income motivated me to do well in life — both for me as well as for the people I loved and left behind to attend school.

It was ironic, then, when I stepped on campus and people automatically labeled me: “Oh… that rich girl.”

At first I was flattered that people thought my thrift-store business casual wardrobe was akin to designer fashion. But I soon realized it wasn’t about my clothes at all. Sure, they judged me by the color of my hair and the fact that I wore high heels. But eventually it became clear it was more about my attitude than anything. I was too assertive. I raised my hand in class when I had something to say. I ran for student senate. I actually talked during senate meetings. I attended all sorts of club meetings. I helped run several clubs, in fact.

I did these things because, for me, this was a second chance at life. I had an opportunity to be a part of something regardless of my financial status. Through good grades and test scores, a crap ton of volunteer hours, and demonstrated dedication to several part-time jobs, I was able to attend PHC alongside the sons and daughters of millionaires. I was thrilled to get the educational opportunity of those in the top bracket. I dove in head first, because I was so grateful to be a part of the campus community. I wanted to make the most of my time there.

But apparently, people (especially boys) didn’t like that.

Be involved in the community, but not too involved, otherwise by default you’ll be smeared by people envious of your success.

Something PHC people don’t realize is that the moment you say something bad about someone behind their back, it’s as if you’ve said it to that person’s face. The gossip travels so quickly that it’s bound to get back to the person you smeared. I can’t tell you how many times I heard, “hey, guess what so-and-so said about you?” and “oh, you wouldn’t believe how she talked about you.” “Guess what he said about you during coffee??” I lived with the rumors every day, and I was called atrocious things by people who said they were my friends.  They thought I didn’t know, but the echo of the rumor mill ensured that I heard the same things they did.

I was called vain, a flirt, a suck up, a fake, a slut, bulimic, insecure, too ambitious, and disingenuous.

There finally came a point where I couldn’t believe they were “just rumors.” Something about them had to be true, right? Even though sometimes — when I walked into a room — I could see people look at me and start to whisper, I just tried to push on. Success never comes easy.

I couldn’t keep my head up, though. Despite all my efforts. I began living constantly terrified of what people thought of me. Without realizing it, I allowed the rumors to isolate me. People didn’t understand me, because I didn’t let a lot of people in. Although I looked okay, I had a wall up — and instead of getting to know me, people were quick to make accusations and judgments.

The next year wasn’t much better.

Why?

Because my professors recognized that I yearned for more responsibility, and gave it to me. I was put in charge of numerous projects and clubs, but with that, a level of authority my peers were unwilling to accept. I had “Christian” classmates calling me a “bitch” because they didn’t want me in a position over them. I had close friends call me “unapproachable”, one going so far as to personally smear me to professors so they could get the position they wanted. It was unbelievable, and I was deeply wounded.

I struggled severely with depression the entire year. But my classmates were too busy resenting my work-ethic that they didn’t notice.

Everything I did, someone questioned my motives, or called me a name. It got to the point that I could barely ask a question in class, without someone rolling their eyes at me or looking at me strangely. Every day, I wanted to crawl in a hole, and disappear. No one came to me to ask if the rumors were true. I felt completely isolated and alone.

RAs, tasked with enforcing dress-code, seemed to take a special liking to me. I would get dress coded at least once a day, and I lived in fear of “sending the wrong message” that I was a rebel. I wanted acceptance, but I began realizing that it would never happen at this place.

There comes a time when success in school isn’t enough to get you through the day. It’s not worth losing friendships over. It’s not worth the pain of people’s jealousy. At the point where I spent three days in bed, not getting up to eat or do anything, I realized I was done trying.

Congratulations, PHC, you broke my spirit.

The girl who was once confident, secure in herself, and goal-oriented is now confused, shaken up, and alone. She feels like the world is against her, simply because she wanted to make something of herself and make the world a better place for those who come from similar backgrounds of poverty and abuse.

On a campus that encourages excellence, I am, to this day, shocked at the hate people get when they succeed. The name calling is like they’re still in high school.

To the students of PHC: You, and your small comments and judgments, could be pushing someone deeper into depression every day. The person you see as an object of gossip also has feelings. The person who looks successful is actually torn apart inside because of your mean words.

I guess I was an easy one to pick on, but I hope no one else has to go through this. As I return to PHC this fall, I’m still wrestling with isolation and depression. I have panic attacks thinking about returning and I worry about what dramas await when I walk through the doors into my first class of the year. I will not be participating in the clubs, events, and senate that I have in years past. I’m withdrawing, but not altogether. I am crushed, but I’m not a quitter.

I need a semester to heal.

Painful Evolutions Required: Wayne’s Story

HA Editorial Team4 Comments

Homeschoolers U

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Wayne” is a pseudonym specifically chosen by the author.

I am a graduate of Patrick Henry College. Moreover, I am a recent graduate – I didn’t go through the schism. Many of the stories critical of PHC come from those who lived through that time, and many of those defending the school come from those currently attending.

I hope to offer a perspective that “splits the difference.”

There will be many in the PHC community who will immediately write this off as the complaint of yet another of the “bitter alumni.” That’s an in-house pejorative frequently applied to PHC grads who openly criticize the school. To preempt this narrative, I would like to observe up front that I am not a disaffected former student taking out my recession-inspired frustration on the institution. At PHC, I worked hard, received good grades, and graduated with honors. I participated on multiple forensics teams, including the celebrated moot court squad, and was accepted to my top-choice graduate program. By most metrics, I had a very successful outcome.

In many ways, I regret attending PHC. In others, I do not.

(Some background: I did not have the extremely conservative homeschooling background many on this website experienced. My parents are successful professionals and committed Christians who truly live out the call of their faith to love others. They are two of the most exceptional people I’ve ever met. Accordingly, my homeschool experience was both spiritually positive and academically enriching. I’m also a straight white male, so my perspective is certainly limited compared to the experiences of others who have written here.)

As a student interested in pursuing a public-policy career, I thought PHC was a perfect fit. I was, unfortunately, incorrect. In my view, PHC must confront and overcome three major issues if it hopes to succeed in the future and avoid the serious problems of its past: 1) lack of meaningful academic engagement, 2) administrative authoritarianism, and 3) corrosive student culture.

Before discussing these, however, I wish to highlight some of the positive aspects of my time at PHC.

Positive Elements

During my time at PHC, I met a number of very exceptional people with similar backgrounds and, in many cases, similar convictions. (I still consider myself a committed Christian, though I have renounced the “evangelical” subculture). Furthermore, the school’s Dean of Academic Affairs, Dr. Frank Guliuzza, served as both a mentor and a personal friend to me. Over and over, Dr. Guliuzza exemplified the very best ideals of Christianity, offering both compassion to the broken-down and guidance to the highly motivated.

I do not know if I would have met the same concentration of incredible people elsewhere. In some ways, PHC’s lack of “diversity” ensured that many of us shared common ground and common experiences. Accordingly, when we faced challenges, we developed uniquely close bonds. I can say with complete honesty that I would die for many of the friends I made at PHC.

And despite the presumed inferiority of any supposed “liberal arts” education delivered within such a rigidly doctrinaire framework, PHC is not an easy school (something which many of its detractors fail to appreciate). The coursework is objectively rigorous (at least in many upper- level government major classes), and the success of the school’s forensics programs speaks for itself.

Having outlined many of the positive elements of my experience, I move now to consider the challenges the school faces.

Lack of Academic Engagement

I first developed concerns on this front during freshman year. Even as a new student, I understood that censoring Michelangelo’s “David” and Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” – with black boxes around the genital areas – was contrary to the purposes of a classical liberal arts education. PHC’s overprotective and intrusive Internet filtering system extended to “tasteless” material (as defined by whom?) and blocked any discussions of drug legalization as a matter of policy. The perspectives of contemporary Catholics and Orthodox Christians were largely absent from the curriculum, as were the contributions of minorities and non-Western cultures to philosophy, history, science, religion, and the arts. Moreover, students were expressly forbidden from making a case for same-sex marriage, even as purely a matter of public policy (Student Handbook 5.1.2.9).

This is not how any “liberal arts education” should be conducted, but it is the inevitable consequence of maintaining a rigid Statement of Faith interpreted solely by the College’s senior leadership.

Administrative Authoritarianism

The school’s priority, above all else, appeared to be maintaining its pristine image as the “Christian Ivy League.” This objective naturally conflicted both with valuing students as individual persons and producing scholarly research which may challenge the established consensus.

I frequently felt that my political views and opinions, which emphasize personal liberty in one’s private life and affairs, were unwelcome on campus. Moreover, I was constantly afraid that any expression of views deemed “problematic” would be relayed to the ever-present Office of Student Life. It is impossible to convey the particularly sickening, stomach-churning dread that somewhere, someone is judging your attitude and spiritual condition. No student in higher education should face that kind of fear on a daily basis.

I hold the Office of Student Life directly responsible for creating a climate of paranoia among students whose views differ from the established consensus. There was no counterpoint to this authoritarianism; the college “newspaper” was censored beyond belief, clearly forbidden to print anything critical of the College or the administration (this last point was not the fault of the staff or supervising professor, but of the College’s higher authorities).

If I had been female, it would have been far worse. I witnessed the shaming of girls by their Resident Assistants – who obsessively sought, as a “Mean Girls”-style means of social retribution, to dress-code them for made-up modesty violations. I listened to chapel messages stating that the responsibility of women was to “control their beauty.” Further discussion of the gender issue is properly the domain of others, however.

As a final example, the administration recently decided to institute an electronic “card scan system” to monitor chapel attendance. The rationale? Attendance numbers reflected that 81% of the student body was attending chapel, rather than the (apparently more acceptable) 85%. I find such an approach – as well as the policy of mandatory daily chapel – a disgrace to worship.

Frankly, I find much of the “big issues” on campus laughable in retrospect – but at PHC, they’re spoken of with dead seriousness and an absurd level of self-righteous pomposity.

Corrosive Student Culture

This is necessarily a highly subjective question, but one which I feel warrants some discussion. A few highlights based on instances I personally witnessed:

  • My personal focus on obtaining good grades and planning for my future career was condemned by other students as unspiritual and utilitarian.
  • Some students outright refused to argue certain topics, even hypothetically, in parliamentary debate rounds (i.e. resolutions in which they may be required to construct a theoretical case for abortion rights). They were subsequently celebrated for their moral courage, rather than encouraged to think through both sides of crucial issues or advised to leave the league. (PHC tuition dollars funded the cross-country travel of these students.)
  • Student “Resident Assistants” betrayed personal confidences to the Office of Student Life, which in turn betrayed those confidences to other Resident Assistants.
  • A large subset of PHC culture expected that fathers give permission for their adult daughters to go out on dates.
  • Many students attributed mental health issues to “spiritual warfare” and “demonic activity,” creating a climate of distrust for modern medicine.
  • Students were taught, and routinely promulgated to others, the toxic idea that the school administration may claim spiritual authority over its students. The school rules expressly forbid public criticism of professors, based on the rationale that such activity “violates the Biblical principle of submission to the authorities whom God has put over us.” (Student Life Handbook, 2.1.2).

Conclusions

My objective in writing this is not to exact some sort of retribution. After all, I and my friends are graduates. I seek to identify some serious problems that persist at PHC and suggest that the school recognize these, taking steps to reform itself accordingly. Such changes are absolutely not incompatible with the Christian faith that the school professes, but may require some painful evolutions: as long as the school’s current administrative figureheads remain in power and remain committed to inflexibility, genuine reform will likely be stonewalled.

I deeply care about many of the people involved in my PHC experience – both those currently attending and those who have graduated. If you are a current student at PHC and this story resonates with you, I hope you realize that you are not alone. Others have wondered the same things, asked the same questions, and faced the same unknowns. Do not accept the narrative that all alumni are angry, pathologically bitter individuals whose post-PHC lives have stalled; I think I speak for many PHC graduates when I say that we sincerely care about you. Please reach out to us. Hear our stories before you make snap judgments about our character or motivations.

When all is said and done, there are two directions a Christian college such as PHC may pursue: embrace the simplistic model of Bob Jones University/Pensacola Christian College, and choke off dissent in the name of ideological purity; or take the path of Wheaton and many others, encouraging cultural engagement while recognizing that all students will not fit into cookie-cutter molds. PHC is clearly caught between these two competing impulses.

One can only hope the school chooses to take the harder, but necessary, road toward reform.

Change The World With Love, Not A Battle Axe: Alaina Gillogly’s Story

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Homeschoolers U

College has taught me a lot about life. I’ve learned that people can be who you think they are or completely different. That it’s possible to pick a bone with anybody.  That one of the greatest joys comes from making a new friend. That decisions have consequences, even if you’d like to believe differently. That it hurts more than you’d imagine to have a bad reputation. That there’s a greater plan, even if you can’t see it.

But more than anything, I’ve learned that finding out who you are is a process.

You don’t just wake up one day and realize, “Yep, I think I’m finally the person I was always meant to be.” (Or if you do, I still have yet to). No, I began finding out who I really was by realizing first who I wasn’t.

That all started at Patrick Henry College.

Now, it’s not my intention to sound cynical, because my story is just that: a story. These are my experiences, the bad and the good. This isn’t a tale of a girl who was smothered by her parents or harassed or anything dramatic like that. But, even though I attended PHC for one year and transferred over a year ago, the experiences I had there are still fresh in my mind. They aren’t as extreme as other students’, but they are mine nonetheless. Some experiences were inspirational, edifying, and encouraging, but many left me bitter, angry, and confused.

It took every day of my time away from PHC to realize and accept that my time there made me stronger. 

When I started my freshman year, I thought I was a pretty typical PHC student: pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-Reagan, pro-Bible, etc. I was 17 and a recent homeschooled high school grad. Granted, I was (and probably still am) more liberal than most of my former classmates. (For example, I don’t believe it’s immodest for a girl to wear shorts or show her belly. I don’t think it’s wrong to have gay friends, listen to non-Christian music, or date). However, I was sure that little differences in opinion wouldn’t affect my experience greatly. After all, I’d taken several AP classes and attended two teen camps without any problem. I was beyond excited for college and sure that PHC was the school for me. From my impressions, PHC was a big, united, Christian family. It would be a great place to grow academically and spiritually, meet other solid Christians, and learn how to change the culture for Christ. So, I assembled and packed up my new business casual wardrobe and set out for an exceptional college experience.

The first several weeks were just as I had pictured them. Even though my parents and I had fought most of my high school years, the distance helped and we talked regularly. My boyfriend at home of four months and I were confident in our ability to endure the distance. All of us students were starting on a level playing field; everybody seemed to like everybody, nobody was “better” than anybody. That was normal, how college was supposed to be.

Then the glow began to fade.

Classes were still top-notch, but I began getting dress-coded at least three times a week. For those of you who don’t know, PHC students are required to wear business casual attire to class and in buildings between 8am-5pm (approximately). I used a tape measure (and my mom) to make sure I was within the guidelines, so I was positive I wouldn’t have any problems. But almost every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after chapel or in the dining hall, my RA would receive a text from someone who thought I needed to change. It didn’t matter if I was in the middle of lunch or in front of the dining hall; I had to go to my room and change immediately. I had no idea who was watching me and determining that I needed to change. It made me extremely self-conscious and defensive, knowing that people were looking for flaws in my attire and never knowing who it was.

I was discouraged and irritated that people were paying more attention to what I was wearing than where I was: at chapel. 

Apparently expecting the person who had an issue to come talk to me personally was too much to ask. As a result, I did my best to avoid anyone who could possibly dress code me, and stuck to wearing flats instead of heels (unless my skirt was below my knees, I would consistently get dress-coded if I wore heels). And adding to my ire was the more questionable (relative to PHC) outfits of the upperclassmen that flew without a hitch.

Even after a few weeks, I was already seen as one of the more liberal, rebel crowd. Maybe it had something to do with my friend group that consisted of girls and guys. Maybe because I wore makeup and skinny jeans. Maybe because I wasn’t worried about sitting beside a guy in chapel. Someone else said it was because the group I hung out with consisted only of the “attractive” freshman. Flattering, but is appearance all a person’s reputation consists of? All I know is that I didn’t get to know very many people before I was grouped into a crowd.

The biggest thing that happened to me occurred when I stayed out once all night. Now, there were a lot of rumors as to what happened, but here’s the truth. My boyfriend of then six months drove down to see me for the first time in two months and we were planning on spending the weekend touring nearby Leesburg, going out to eat, and just have some face-to-face time. Nothing more, nothing less. The first night he was down, we went to where he was staying (since he couldn’t stay on campus), and fell asleep watching a movie. When I woke up at 3:30 a.m., I knew I had already missed curfew and was going to be in trouble if I came back then. So, I messaged my roommates and went back to sleep.

The next morning, I went back to campus to freshen up. Several of my roommates were upset I had stayed out without permission (in order to stay out overnight, you have to be cleared by your RA as well as the RD), and one apparently was appalled because she went to Student Life that evening. She didn’t come to me first, didn’t ask me what happened. Once I found out what she did, I asked her privately why she didn’t talk to me first.

She said she didn’t see the point, because “what was done in the dark should be brought into the light.”

To be completely honest, I think it had a lot to do with my already “rebel” reputation.

Student Life immediately requested I come to the office the following day at 1 p.m. (I guess it wasn’t possible to ask what time worked well for me; I had to be told). I went, and the dean immediately began raining questions down. Knowing it would cause only trouble to mention my boyfriend, I told them I fell asleep off campus with a good friend. When the barrage continued with extremely personal (and outside of PHC, inappropriate) questions, I politely asked if I could keep the details of the experience to myself; if they needed to “punish me” for staying out, they could.

Instead, they called my home phone and left a message on the answering machine, something to the extent of “your daughter is in the office, please call us back as soon as possible.” Then they phoned my mom and listened to the conversation while mouthing the words I was supposed to tell her. When I didn’t comply, they sent an email to my parents and told them I was being difficult and rebellious (I never saw the email, so those are my words, not theirs). After being in the office for over an hour and a half, they told me to come back the following day after they had determined my punishment. I was on the verge of tears and scared of Student Life and my parents, who were extremely upset and threatened to stop helping me pay for my tuition. I have never felt as scared, hopeless, and stressed as I did then. In the end, I was no longer allowed to stay out past 11 p.m. or stay overnight without parental permission.

I was 18.

If that wasn’t enough to deal with along with finals, whoever reported me to Student Life told all her friends who in turn told their friends. In a few days, the campus was abuzz with how badly I had messed up. The roommate who had reported me was praying for “Jesus to save my soul.” Apparently making a mistake condemned me to hell. I got so many condescending stares and cold shoulders–I have not felt that isolated in my life. Some people wouldn’t acknowledge me, others would gossip behind my back.  That didn’t change much for the rest of my time there; I was a “sinner” and didn’t measure up. 

It made me wonder how these people could demonstrate the love of God to the world when they couldn’t even manage to speak to a fellow Christian.

Now, I am not writing any of this to defend myself; I know I broke a PHC rule I had agreed to follow. That was wrong, and I am not complaining about getting caught or punished. I know what it looks like for a girl and guy to be alone all night. It hadn’t even occurred to me I could be a “stumbling block” to nonbelievers, because I truly wasn’t planning on falling asleep or staying out all night. It was an accident and I wholeheartedly accept the blame. Maybe I could have handled the situation differently somehow. But all that aside, I am writing because I see the real problem with this situation was how Student Life and the student body handled it. I felt like my pre-existing reputation as a worldly, liberal student is what turned something small (in the real world) into such a riot. What happened to forgiveness?

No one believed I had simply fallen asleep once they heard I was out all night with a man. No one seemed to understand I had been with a person I love, trust, and who would keep me safe (and who I am currently still dating). I wasn’t doing drugs, sleeping around, committing a crime, drinking (or drinking and driving), nor was I being reckless. I simply fell asleep.

Worse things than that occur on campus and are neatly swept under the rug.

Couples who dated inside PHC stayed off campus frequently together without a hitch. But I wasn’t dating someone from PHC. So, because I was not following the cookie-cutter courtship path most people followed (finding someone at PHC, getting engaged, then getting married), it was a problem.

My “sinner” label didn’t change for the rest of my time at PHC. But once the spring semester started, I decided I was done worrying about what everyone thought of me.  Call me a rebel, I really don’t care anymore, was my most frequent thought. I did my best to follow dress-code and the other rules and immersed myself in my studies. That semester, my biggest source of stress was the drama.

Oh, the drama. It was like being in junior high school again. It was about who likes who, who said what, who would invite who to the next dance, who was cool, who wasn’t. I couldn’t handle the immaturity of it. I graduated high school to have deep conversations, not speculate about whether Tom likes Jane. More than anything, I didn’t want my personal thoughts repeated to everyone else (which had happened multiple times). So, except for one or two close friends, I distanced myself from those around me. I was lonely, but I didn’t know how else to keep sanity and privacy in a place where everyone wants to know everything about everybody.

Most of what I have said so far has been negative. That is because almost all my strongest memories of PHC are negative. I cried more in that 9 months than I ever have before. I was stressed out, depressed that PHC wasn’t the place I thought it would be, and worried about my credits transferring (I should have known they wouldn’t). I’ve only had two breakdowns in my life, but both happened during those months.

But all that aside, my experience turned out to be invaluable. Remember what I said about PHC showing me who I wasn’t?

I realized that I wasn’t the stereotypical, homeschooled girl I thought.

From seeing what I disliked, realized I valued loyalty, trust, honesty, and acceptance more than I thought. As a result, I try to embody those things more than I would have. I realized that I wanted a college where I can grow, not somewhere I have to tread fearfully. It should be somewhere I can make my own choices, not somewhere they are made for me. That knowledge, coupled with the other things I learned about myself, gave me a lot of confidence. Now, I am at a state university and 100 percent free to be me. It’s a liberating feeling.

And I haven’t said anything about the classes. They were phenomenal. To date, they are the best, the hardest, and the most rewarding classes I have taken. The professors cared wholeheartedly about the students and inspired me with their wisdom. My journalism and U.S. history professors were willing to talk about anything and consistently gave great advice. Two thumbs up for the academic departments.

But the greatest thing PHC gave me is my confidence in my faith. By observing both abrasive and loving Christians, I started seeing what it takes to be a strong, but likable Christian. (Note: Mat. 10:22 is obviously still valid, but that doesn’t mean we should try and antagonize the world into hating us). As a result, I have been able to express my faith in a secular environment without fear. I learned what intolerance looks like, so I try to be tolerant. I know what condescension feels like, so I try to be humble. I know what it’s like to be labeled as a “sinner” and it hurts. 

Instead of changing the world with the battle axe some PHC students wielded, I found that simply loving without judging, caring without condescending, can be the most effective. 

(Note: That’s not to say Christians should love the sins of others, but let a perfect God be the judge, not a fallible human).

Unlike some, my time at PHC did not draw me away from God; instead, the troubles I encountered made me learn so much more about Him, and consequently myself. However, please don’t attend a Christian school so that problems with other Christians make you closer to God. Go somewhere Christians stick together and grow together, where you are fighting a common enemy: sin, not someone else.

When I Encountered Grace: Sarah Dunford’s Story

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

Homeschoolers U

This summer, as I prepare to enter my junior year at PHC, I have been reflecting on my time at PHC. I have enjoyed the past two years. This is not to say that it does not come with its challenges and struggles, but that I have been encouraged and strengthened by the community and structure established there. To better explain what I mean by this, here is a brief summary of my life at PHC thus far.

My first encounter with PHC was an ad I saw in an HSLDA magazine. My initial reaction was, “That is a college for homeschoolers. I will never go there.” At that point, I was a freshman in high school without the thought of potential colleges in my mind.

A year or so later when I began looking at colleges again, I came back to PHC. After hours exploring the website and reading the course catalog, I fell in love with the classes offered there. I wanted to take (nearly) every class listed.

I traveled from California to Virginia to visit PHC my junior year of high school. What I remember most is a conversation I had with a PHC junior in the dining hall. This conversation, most of which I’ve forgotten, included a description about life at PHC. At some point, he said that each student at PHC reaches a point where they break and realize how much they need God. I really appreciated his vulnerability in sharing his story — and I thought I understood what he meant.

But it wasn’t until I underwent the process myself that I came to know the full meaning.

A year and a half later, I came to PHC as a student. I thought I was prepared for what I would encounter, but I was soon stretched in every aspect possible. I wanted to excel in academics, but struggled to keep up with the workload and reach my ideal GPA. I wanted to make friends and be outgoing, but I questioned if people enjoyed my company. I wanted to engage in intellectual conversations, but told myself that I had nothing to contribute and remained silent. I wanted to maintain my faith, but easily forgot God in the midst of my busy schedule.

Academics

In high school I did well in classes. I thought academics would be no problem at PHC. Yes, I expected it to consume a lot of time but I would excel nonetheless. About a week into the semester I was already behind. Most people were in the same position, but I still wanted to keep up. I never did. I would become overwhelmed with the workload and the stress prevented me from focusing on what I was working on at the moment.

This is not an uncommon story among college students. For me there was another aspect.

School was my only accomplishment thus far. When I could not meet my expectations in school, I lost my worth. Having placed my identity in academics, I no longer knew who I was. It’s okay to laugh at me. I see now how short minded I was with my preoccupation with grades. I was nearly always aware of my grade in any class. I had constructed a spreadsheet to calculate my grades, and checked it even when there were no new assignments to input. This was a habit from high school when I was responsible to calculate my grades. But in college it became my motivation. And my standard for success.

I needed grades to indicate if my time had been well-spent or not.

Friends

My friendships at school began opposite my expectations, in the same way academics did. The difference was that my initial expectation was that it would take weeks to develop any good friendships. The truth was by the end of orientation, my freshmen suitemates were my closest friends, as if I had known them for years.

As the semester progressed and I made more friends, I soon found that my insecurities regarding friends still remained. Though I now had the closest friends I ever had in my life, I was still questioning if people truly wanted to be with me, or if they were only my friends because they pitied me.

Intellectual

Many people I met at PHC had been involved in speech and debate and loved to bring their experience to the dining hall. This intrigued me at first. I loved listening to them, for though it was pointless, it could become very entertaining. A few weeks later it only annoyed me. I wasn’t comfortable engaging and giving my opinions.

I didn’t want to debate, I wanted to discuss.

This was found in the classroom more than in the dining hall. Rather than the goal being to prove you are right (which was what annoyed me), you would be able to give your perspective. Yes, debates did break out in class sometimes, but not as often as the dining hall. Still, anytime I spoke my heart raced and I knew that my words were not well expressed. I told myself that anything I said in class was worthless.

So I remained silent. I would let those smarter and more eloquent than me speak.

Spiritual

I assumed that I would easily maintain my faith while at PHC. How hard could it be, it’s a Christian school, right?

We have chapel five days a week. Chapel can be great at school. But it was easy for me to adopt a habitual spirituality that scheduled perfectly between my classes without taking the time to know God intimately. My Christianity became something intellectual. I would talk about God, but never really talked to God. But many times I was frustrated. I could not understand God. Then I doubted Him. He wasn’t working like He used to. Many of my friends would mention the things God had been teaching them. I didn’t see it. I didn’t feel lost, but I felt like I had lost God.

I wanted to give up trying to find Him. It was too hard.

*****

In each of the four areas above, I wanted to form my life into what I thought it should be. Anytime I fell short I would despair. I kept telling myself that when I had my life put together I would be happy. Anytime I made progress, my failings in another area would become exposed. I was stuck. I was exhausted. I was chained. What would free me?

Some people at school feel trapped by the rules at PHC. That wasn’t my problem. 

I am naturally drawn to rules. If you don’t give me rules, I will make them for myself. But I am not the best at always following rules. Though I am excellent at mentally punishing myself after I don’t meet my own standards. I made my list of what I needed to do in order to have a successful life. I was tired of wasting my time.

What I needed was grace. This is the whole message of the Gospel. But I missed it.

I had come to realize that I did not have the ability in myself to work hard enough to become the person I thought I had to be. And I thought this meant my life was meaningless. That was a lie.

Grades, friends, and having remarkable ideas do not define my life. Grace does.

None of the four areas above are resolved, but here is how grace has set me free.

I can do school work because I love to learn, for I don’t have to earn a grade to validate my existence.

I can enjoy my friends, knowing that I don’t have to be the perfect friend. I will mess up, but because they are genuine friends, they will forgive me. I can trust them.

I don’t have to worry what people will think when I share my ideas. They may laugh. Some people will always laugh. Many will disagree with me. But I know who I am and what I believe. Engaging with people at PHC with different ideas has helped me sharpen my opinions. And there are also people there who can eloquently express what I have been longing to say. I learn from these people.

I have learned more of the true identity of Christianity is. It has no connection to the number of times you attend chapel or how many things in your life you can label “Christian.” I could not become a Christian by the things I do or don’t do. It is the work of grace in an individual’s life.

My time at PHC was consumed with a constant list of things I needed to do. At many points, I felt like I was drowning. During this time many deep struggles I had grown up with but never noticed emerged. Many of my problems at PHC came from within, for I am my worst adversary.

I eventually stopped trying to hide my problems at PHC and told people my struggles.

Many some people judged me, but I don’t care. So many of my peers reminded me that grades are not important. They showed that they are true friends. They validated my ideas and encouraged me to share my perspective. They didn’t judge me when I questioned my faith, but reminded me that God is constant. Yes, I will fail, but that is not the end.

At PHC, I encountered grace. This I will carry throughout my time here and beyond.

Female Students Were Always Treated Graciously: Esau’s Story

HA Editorial Team10 Comments

Homeschoolers U

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Esau” is a pseudonym.

I heard that you are calling for contributions from graduates of Patrick Henry College, and I think you need to hear a balance of different perspectives, so I am writing. Please do not identify me by name–I wish to remain anonymous (you may identify me as a male student who was a member of the class of 2010). Please be very careful if you feel compelled to edit my comments… I will be very angry if my words are twisted or misquoted in any way!

Here are some of my observations about life at Patrick Henry, based on my personal observation, during the time I was there (2006-2010):

–Campus culture tended to divide into narrow, insular “cliques” or circles. A particular student might circulate through multiple cliques, but the cliques themselves seldom overlapped.  Acceptable behavior varied widely between these different cliques. This, I believe, is a source of much confusion: observers tend to generalize about the entire school based on what happened in a single clique, without realizing that other students behaved very differently. Some cliques or circles engaged in risky behavior, or liked to go off campus and break rules just to see what they could get away with. Other circles were exactly the opposite, not only in obedience to but also in support of and agreement with the rules that governed life on campus. Students who never found at least one circle or clique to become a part of generally did not last long.

–Much has been made of the way male students treated female students. I never personally perceived a culture of “rape” or chauvinist male dominance at Patrick Henry. Throughout my time on campus, in the circles I was a part of, female students were always treated graciously, courteously, and with respect. Behind closed doors, the men I associated with always spoke about female students wholesomely and respectfully. That is not an exaggeration or a generalization–it is the literal truth. Not only that, but some male students even took it upon themselves to play the role of vigilantes in protecting the honor of female students against any perceived inappropriate behavior, confronting alleged “creeps” and firmly warning them to mend their ways (this is not a generalization or based on hearsay). Some male PHC students, especially freshmen, were so awkward and uncomfortable dealing with members of the opposite sex that they did their best to avoid them altogether, sitting only with other male students in the dining hall and seldom, if ever, setting foot in the common areas of female dorms. For some, the awkwardness eased after a few years; for others, it remained intact even through graduation day.

–Patrick Henry students loved to argue. Oh, how they loved to argue. It was absolutely vital to always have something to argue about. Among freshmen, many arguments revolved around finer points of theology, particularly Calvinism vs. Arminianism. Thankfully, many older students eventually tired of arguing theology and moved on to other subjects. During much of my time on campus, a perennial topic of argument was proposed revisions to the student honor code. The need to argue about something was such a deep-seated urge, in fact, that if there were no genuine controversy to argue about, a controversy would sometimes be manufactured, seemingly just so people would have something to argue about in the dining hall.

–There were a relatively small number of students who were consumed with hatred and bitterness toward the administration, because of things the administration had allegedly done to them and their friends. Students who felt persecuted by the administration sometimes took out their wrath and frustration on students who did not share their hatred of the administration. In particular, some members of the outgoing class of 2007 greeted the incoming class of 2010 with a great deal of anger and bitterness, stirred up to apoplectic frenzy by the very thought that incoming freshmen could dare to be happy and enthusiastic about the school after the Great Schism of 2006.  While I was a student these kinds of controversies sometimes played out as “ASE wars,” epic e-mail battles which clogged the inboxes of the entire student body (Explanation: while I was there, students had the ability to send mass e-mails, known as ASEs (All Student E-mails) to the entire student body. Students lost this privilege during my senior year.)

–I personally did not share the hostility that many students felt toward the administration. I never had any reason to believe that the administration was my enemy, or was persecuting me, or had anything other than the best interests of the students at heart. The only instance in which I was ever unfairly treated by any member of the staff or administration was one time when my privileges to drive school vans were summarily revoked without explanation. Upon inquiry I discovered that they had been revoked because another student had complained and said things about my driving that were not true. I was sternly lectured on the need to improve without ever being given a chance to tell my side of the story or defend myself; my driving privileges were grudgingly restored after I humbly promised to do better, even though I was not really guilty of the fault in question. Even so, though, I felt no real hostility to the administration over the incident, since it was such a minor issue in the whole scheme of things.

–Most of the professors I had were excellent teachers who genuinely cared about their students. The few teachers who did not like their students typically did not last very long. Professors often went out of their way to spend time with students, eating meals with them in the dining hall, inviting them into their homes, organizing trips and events, and attending student affairs such as the famous Liberty Ball.

–Because the school was so small, it functioned as an incredibly tightly-knit community. There were disadvantages to this kind of closeness: rumors and gossip, once started, could spread like wildfire and destroy someone’s reputation, and students who disliked each other found it difficult to avoid one another on the small campus. There were also major advantages as well: many students genuinely loved and cared for one another; students worshiped and sang together, prayed for each other, helped each other out when they could, and occasionally even took up community monetary offerings to help those in need.

Love Jesus, All Else Be Damned: Sophia’s Story

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

Homeschoolers U

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Sophia” is a pseudonym specifically chosen by the author.

My parents are very well meaning people.

They didn’t go to college, and they didn’t grow up religious. Just before they started a family together, they came to Christianity. For them, it meant safety. It was a formula for doing things correctly and for protecting their children from the hurt that they experienced in their own lives, hurt for which Christianity offered an explanation (sin). They homeschooled us to “protect us from the world.”

Growing up, though, I didn’t feel protected.

Instead, the most vivid memories I have from my childhood are of fear and loneliness. Fear that, at any moment, I was transgressing one of my parent’s constantly changing rules. Loneliness that came from sitting at home most days, with nothing to keep me company but my family and my books. Patrick Henry College seemed like a perfect escape. It was on the other side of the country, their rules seemed lenient to the sheltered 16-year-old filling out her college application, and best of all, I would constantly be around other people my age.

In reality, attending Patrick Henry College (PHC) was an extension of all the worst parts of my childhood. Again, I stepped into an atmosphere full of suffocating rules. All of our time was spent in rigidly structured and overbearingly supervised social interactions. When there was no rule in place, the college administration (really, disciplinary watchdogs), would remind us that we should abide by the “spirit,” not just the “letter” of the law.

If no rule existed, you weren’t safe. Instead, you needed to invent one. 

We had mandatory chapel where we (or at least, I, doubting my faith even as a freshman) had to feign enthusiasm while singing worship songs.  After that, we would listen to various speakers tell us of the evils of liberalism and homosexuality, or perhaps give a lengthy digression on some portion of the Bible. We spent the rest of our time in classes all day, then studying at night, all while conforming to a rigid dress code and rigid conduct rules (and many informal social sanctions). My four years at PHC were filled with incredible loneliness.

Within a few weeks, the excitement of leaving home faded, and the nature of my new prison became increasingly clear. I came to PHC the semester after the “schism.” My friends were all people who had been deeply affected by the ousting of multiple professors, and were generally “anti-administration.” At PHC, a school filled with students who’d spent their lives trying to understand reality in an us-versus-them (conservatives-versus-liberals, Christians-versus-nonbelievers, etc.) framework, it seemed natural to view the student body of PHC (a, mind you, very conservative school) with a liberal-versus-conservative, bad Christian-versus-good-Christian rubric.

My friends were the “liberals”, and by associating with them, dressing somewhat normally, and having career aspirations as a female, I too was branded as a liberal. Once, after attending a concert in DC with some older students, two members of the administration called me in to question me (probably thinking they could scare me, a freshman, more easily than they could an older student) about the purported use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs by students at the concert. I managed to say something about how I thought gossip was a sin, and they let me go. It was clear, though, that I had been branded, and was being watched.

College, a place where I was supposed to finally have friends, became a place where I felt lonelier than ever.

I didn’t know whom to trust. I felt that anyone around me was possibly watching for me to transgress a rule so they could report me to the administration. And if not that, anyone around me was probably judging me:

“You’re eating that much food?”

“You’re wearing that dress?”

“Your attitude toward that boy seemed flirtatious.”

“That comment was too assertive.”

Of course, coming from where I came from, I didn’t think this was wrong, or a problem with the college. I thought that there was something wrong with me. I simply wasn’t trying hard enough to be godly or pure enough.

That was just the tip of the iceberg. I now teach college students at a much more prestigious research institution, and I know that even at major Universities, freshmen confront some of the biggest blows to their egos of their lives. Students who were at the top of their class at prep school find themselves grade-grubbing at their TA’s office hours when they receive their first B- (or worse) on an essay. At PHC, we were learning how to write and think like all college students, and that involved many ego-bruisings. But there were also a few more nefarious subtexts.

We had to excel, because this was our Christian duty. Failure was somehow sinful. But in exceling, we couldn’t be too prideful. Especially as a female, this attitude could be seen as inappropriate. In one instance, after a particularly contentious student senate meeting where I’d spoken against the “conservative” wing of the senate, a fellow student senator (a “mature Christian” male) came to me and said:

“You know, everyone hates you. You’re too assertive, and it’s not a godly or womanly attitude.”

What really broke me, though, was something that happened freshman year. I was on the college debate team, which was one of PHC’s main selling points (“See, we have this activity where our students sometimes do ok against people at normal schools! We’re awesome!”). I’d won my first tournament. At my second tournament, my partner and I won enough rounds to advance as first seed, which meant we had the best performance in preliminary rounds. Our coach (another student), thinking that I needed to learn humility, held us back from advancing, and sent another team ahead of us. I couldn’t understand it. I thought I’d done everything I needed to do, but somehow there was this deeper logic of being ambiguously “Christian enough” that I was failing to follow.  After that, part of me stopped trying. I didn’t know where the lines were anymore. I just knew that I was somehow spiritually inadequate, and I didn’t know how to fix it.

I started to go deeper and deeper inside myself in the quest to be good enough. Like so many perfectionist girls, even in less restrictive environments, I decided I needed more rigid self-discipline. So I stopped eating, both because this felt like some form of success or control, and because I felt that I needed punishment for my inadequacies. As my eating disorder continued to develop, I continued to withdraw. The only way to stay safe from the onslaught of judgment was not to let anyone in, ever. One by one, my friends started to slip away from me. I still don’t really blame them. As an 18, 19, or 20 year old, dealing with your 18 year old friend’s anorexia is a pretty tall order, especially if you think it’s a sin (which she can just stop committing) instead of a disease (for which she might need professional help). I never got that help. The campus administration, who cared so deeply about whether our skirts were 2 or 3 inches above our knees (the latter was a serious infraction) or whether we imbibed alcohol (for which you could be expelled), didn’t seem to care at all about the fact that I (and many other students) developed life threatening self-harm disorders.

At the worst of the eating disorder, when I could hardly walk and just wanted to die and make it all go away, many people questioned my “walk with the Lord,” but not a single person asked me if I was ok.

This, to me, is what PHC stood for. Love Jesus, all else be damned.

Every time someone told me they “just couldn’t deal with me anymore,” or I  “needed to get right with the Lord,” I dealt with it by closing up a little bit inside, and eating a little bit less (650 calories today, only 600 tomorrow, oh, I didn’t deserve that salad, I should throw it up, etc). When an older classmate, someone I trusted, took advantage of that trust to force himself on me, I didn’t really resist. I was just a worthless shell, after all. Who was I to say no? It didn’t even seem worth reporting.

After all, it was (as I was later told by another male student) probably because my skirts were a “stumbling block”.

My parents, of course, didn’t know what to do.

They knew something was wrong when I came home for Christmas break my freshman year, 30 pounds underweight, withdrawn, and sad. I didn’t have the words to articulate what was happening to me, or how things were going at PHC, which they interpreted as standoffish. Even if I had articulated a cry for help, their backgrounds and religion didn’t provide them with the tools to help me. They tried various tactics, including denial, anger, and threats. But eventually it was them, in a fumbling but heartfelt attempt, as well as the kind attention of a wonderful professor, that finally tipped the balance.

After my freshman year, when I was exhausted, waif-like, and contemplating giving up on it all, my mom called me. She didn’t tell me I was sinning. She didn’t yell. She didn’t judge.

She just told me how she loved me.

How when she was pregnant they told her I might not make it, and how she cried and prayed and hoped every day that I would, and how it felt to hold me for the first time, and how all she’d ever tried for in life was to protect me in pain, and how she felt like she failed, and please, please not to give up.

Her words were filled with love, and in that love was a kind of freedom. It was also the freedom I found in the classes of one particularly gifted professor, who transported us away from the rigid confines of religious rules to questions about existence, knowledge, and politics.

These glimpses of freedom helped me make it through. Eventually, I recovered from anorexia (without any professional help, which is a different story). I made it through the rest of the PHC (not happily, but again, that’s another story), and I made it out to go to graduate school in a big city with no one to answer to but myself. Now, many years later, I still get nauseous anytime I get near Purcellville, Virginia. Sometimes I’m still bitter and angry, but mostly I’m grateful for my freedom.

Last year, I came back for homecoming to speak on an alumni roundtable about graduate school. The students expressed concerns about what it would be like to be surrounded by “non-believers”, who might keep them from vocalizing a “Christian worldview” in the classroom. I’m afraid that my attempts to explain the glories of academic freedom or the wonders of objective scholarship fell on deaf ears.

What I was trying to tell them was something I wish someone had told me:

Outside of that overly stylized colonial campus, there are places where you have the freedom to say what you think, and no one’s going to report you for it.

What I Saw Was Exactly What I Got: Ruan Meintjes’s Story

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Homeschoolers U

Dear Homeschool Anonymous,

I wanted to take a moment and respond to your request for stories from PHC students. Thank you for your interest in the wellbeing of homeschoolers. I am encouraged that you seek to hear and understand all sides of the coin. In pursuance of your request, I briefly wanted to share my story.

I come from an immigrant family where English is not my first language. Both my parents are doctors who homeschooled my siblings and I from the 1st grade through high school. Before arriving at PHC, I had the opportunity to see much of the world. I’ve been chased by prostitutes through the streets of Hong Kong, seen people die on the side of the road in Africa, and experienced the opulence—and the horrors—of the western world. I say all this to indicate that PHC wasn’t my first brush with reality.

PHC is very different from any place I’ve encountered in my travels and experiences during high school. I found the people to be welcoming, kind, smart, and sincere. I further discovered that the faculty and administration were very clear about their mission. They were there to provide a world-class education for each student based on biblical values and a personal relationship with Christ.

What I saw was exactly what I got.

To this day (I’m a junior now) I’ve never found a taboo discussion, we were free to explore any topic with our professors or with our administrators. In the case that a controversy arose, we as students were encouraged to immediately engage the campus leaders and to confidently expect an answer within a reasonable time frame. I’ll give you an example.

A sensitive student life issue arose two years ago that affected a small group of students, including myself. I decided that I was going to be a plucky freshman and waltz into the school authority’s office to get some answers. Obviously, I’m omitting the details of the situation, but suffice it to say that I quickly got a respectful, reasonable, and professional answer. The issue was resolved. All it took to come to an amicable solution in that instance was all parties communicating clearly, quickly, and professionally.

In terms of fellow students, we get all kinds. Yes, we even have some liberals. Gasp. We have people who were homeschooled and hated it, homeschooled and loved it, people who struggle with sexuality, alcohol, depression, and the list goes on. I’ve only been at PHC for two full years now, so take my observations for what their worth. Never, in my time there, did I ever see a student marginalized because of beliefs or struggles. In fact, those with differing opinions from the majority of campus are respected, a close community of friends carries those who struggle with personal or professional difficulties, and those who thrive are celebrated.

Now, let me be clear, none of this is to say that PHC has no problems.

Whoever idolizes PHC as the problem-free school is either remarkably stupid or a big fat liar. Call it what it is. Here’s what I’ve seen. When my class hit the tarmac our freshman year, we were 90-or-so green, neubish, teenagers who wanted to get an education. I was ungracious, unkind, and made callous/painfully stupid moves more times than I care to admit. Now, as a junior, I’m still ungracious, unkind, and make more callous/painfully stupid moves than I care to admit. The only difference is that I’m two years further along the road to fixing those problems.

And the fact is that PHC’s campus is filled with people like me.

We’re growing and making mistakes as we’re maturing; all of which takes place on a very small campus. So we cause problems. I remember this one time in my dorm when there was a rather serious spat between a number of students that required Student Life’s involvement. That’s fine. It’s not a surprise to see people disagreeing. What was surprising though, was the amount of integrity with which school officials and students handled the unfortunate situation. I believe that this outstanding behavior is due in no small part to the remarkable people on campus, and their shared values. If folks are looking for the perfect campus, they aren’t going to find it in northern Virginia.

What they can expect to find, is a well-engineered playground for young people seeking maturity where mistakes can be made in the process of learning.

I’ve had a good time at PHC; the place leaves a good taste in my mouth. I’ve seen its ups and downs and experienced some of my life’s most extreme challenges there. I thank God for the school, and I will remain forever thankful for the people who do their best to run it. That’s my two cents worth. Hope it helps!

Warm regards,

Ruan

The Reluctant Rebel: Gemma’s Story, Part Seven

HA Editorial Team8 Comments

Homeschoolers U

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Gemma” is a pseudonym specifically chosen by the author.

< Part Six

Part Seven: Aftermath

On paper, my post-PHC life has been quite successful.

As it turns out, I do have a future in academia. I was accepted to an excellent graduate program in the DC area. I teach at the collegiate level, and I’m good at it. I am still a Christian, mostly due to the fact that I had some experience with the type of Christianity that loves and accepts and forgives before coming to college. I recognized the “Christianity” used to hurt me there as a bastardization of the real thing. Today, I am happily married and still run with the same group of friends I had in college. The future looks bright.

Spiritually, my post-PHC life has been a mixed bag. On one hand, the spiritual abuse my friends and I encountered at school poisoned entire swaths of the normal Christian life for us. Things as simple as prayer and reading the Bible trigger either bad memories or massive amounts of legalism-induced guilt. For me, just hearing one of the praise songs we used to sing in chapel at college would be enough to induce a panic attack. Many of my friends left the faith altogether, and I don’t blame them. Those of us who stayed Christians found homes in various liturgical traditions. On the other hand, the process of sorting through my faith and wrestling with what to keep and what to discard has been enormously rewarding. It is difficult to admit to myself that I just don’t know what I believe anymore, and to try to re-explain the tenets of the faith to myself in words that are meaningful to me now. But I have discovered that Jesus is big enough to handle my doubts, and he seems to be the one constant at the bottom of all my confusion and grief. Today, I am a better Christian than I ever have been, but it has taken years of struggle to come to this place.

Ironically, had it not been for Mike Farris and his college, I would probably still be a conservative evangelical, attending a Bible Church and homeschooling my kids. I would never have had a reason to leave the world I grew up in, because it was a world I didn’t want to leave in the first place.

Their abuse is the only thing that drove me away.

But in other ways directly attributable to my time at PHC, life has been a massive struggle. I graduated a broken, burnt-out shell of a person and spent the first several years after graduation in a haze of grief, anger, and depression. I lost weight. I slept all the time. I had panic attacks daily. Some days, I felt so physically sick—dizzy, nauseous, exhausted—I couldn’t even get out of bed. I skipped class a lot. Even though I was out from under the oppression, I couldn’t shake the sense that I was being watched wherever I went. It didn’t help that I would randomly run into people I didn’t want to see, since I still lived in the DC area. I lived in paranoid and baseless fear that my new university would find something wrong with me, that I would unwittingly break some rule and be found out, or that they would realize they had made a mistake by accepting my unaccredited undergraduate degree and kick me out. I was afraid to speak up in class, so I didn’t. Academically, I was extremely well-prepared for graduate school, but my exhaustion, depression, and anxiety prevented me from getting the most out of my program.

It also didn’t help that PHC continued to abuse its remaining students, many of whom had taken up the fight and kept me abreast of the issues. I fought with them for a while, via the alumni association, interviews with reporters, or maintaining protest websites. Over time, as more of my friends graduated or left, I just dissociated from the entire place as much as I could.

But the dissociation didn’t cure the emotional and spiritual wounds. At the time, I didn’t have much of an understanding of mental health, and attributed my problems to a set of inexplicable, incorrigible physical symptoms. In retrospect, it is obvious that I was deeply depressed and also struggling with severe anxiety. My therapist has compared my symptoms to PTSD, a common description for those who have experienced environments of intense spiritual and emotional abuse. These things don’t heal overnight.

I believe the abuse I experienced at PHC robbed me of my health and happiness in the prime of my life.

I spent 10 years crushed by the weight of broken health, a broken spirit, a broken heart. I didn’t want to live like this. It wasn’t my choice. I wasn’t wallowing in bitterness or being hard-hearted or refusing to trust God enough. After a while, the school wasn’t even on my radar anymore, but the feelings stayed. I think when you spend enough time feeling a certain way, those feelings just start to feel so normal you stop imagining life without them, and then one day you can’t imagine life any other way at all.

Now on the verge of my 4th decade, I’ve finally gotten myself the professional help I needed for so long. Reading people’s stories on HA has helped in the sense that I can see now that I am not alone. But it has also brought up a lot of strong feelings I thought had gone away. Writing this story was very hard, but I thought it was important to do for a few reasons:

First, I want there to be a record of the truth. I want people to know that some of us stood up for what was right and against what was wrong. I want people to know that serious wrong was done to us, and we tried to respond in the right way. I am proud of myself and my friends for the way we handled ourselves. Although no one should have to endure what we endured at college, I am glad that I had an opportunity to stand up for something I believed in, at significant personal risk. I am glad that when I had a chance to be courageous, I took it. Not everyone gets those opportunities in life, and not all of those who get them, take them. We did.

Secondly, I want people to know what PHC is really about. I can’t tell you how many times, even while I was still a student, I would have settled for the school just admitting the truth about itself, even if that meant I had to live with that truth forever. Patrick Henry College is not a normal, mainstream, classical-liberal-arts college. It is not regionally accredited and apparently never will be, despite what we early students were promised when we enrolled.

Patrick Henry College is a sheltered, religiously fundamentalist, agenda-driven institution; a side project of HSLDA like Oak Brook is a side project of ATI/IBLP.

Its purpose is not to give students a quality collegiate education on which to base their own dreams and plans for the future, but to indoctrinate students into the mindset of its founders and leaders, so they can be deployed into positions of power and thereby further the political and social agenda of those leaders.

I am not exaggerating. This is the truth.

In order to fulfill this agenda and succeed in getting people into power, the college wants to maintain its veneer of respectability and normality. But it is just a veneer. Once upon a time, some professors and students fought with all our strength to make the veneer into a solid reality, but we were kicked to the curb by those in power. That ship has sailed. The only thing left to do now is peel back the veneer and expose the underlying reality.

Finally, I want others to know that they are not alone. Recently I saw that students at Bryan College were going through a similar struggle. I hope they know they have support, and that what they are doing is courageous and important.

As long as my story has been, I have not included every significant thing that happened while I was at PHC.

I have not even included the worst things. There are some stories that, even now, a decade or more later, are too painful to write about.

Some events included other people, whose stories I don’t want to tell for them. And I have left out many of the weekly and daily occurrences that, individually, were just straws, but over time accumulated into an unbearable, back-breaking mountain. The little comments made in chapel or in the lunch line; the judgmental, preachy emails sent to all-students by self-appointed morality police; the new rule adjustments, interpretations, or applications that dribbled out from the Office of Student Life. All reminders of the invisible standard we non-conformists were not conforming to. All reminders of who was in charge, and who was watching, and how we could never live up. A thousand little discouragements. They add up after a while, but there are too many to remember.

I hold no grudges against my fellow students. Thanks to the work of people at Homeschoolers Anonymous and Recovering Grace, I now have the perspective to see that those of my fellow students who made my life so unhappy were unhappy themselves. They were not actually evil sadists, but victims of a sadistic system. They didn’t know any better. Many of them have changed. Their stories, like mine, are not over yet. My hope, for all of them, friends and foes alike, is that they will find some peace on their journeys after all.

Honestly, I have had a harder time forgiving the adults in charge at PHC, mostly because they have refused even to entertain the idea that they might have been at fault for some of what happened, and that they, personally, might have hurt students and alumni along the way. Recently, it seems that Mike Farris is in more of an apologetic mood. As I can personally attest, the skeletons that have come out of the fundamentalist homeschooling movement’s closet in the last year have prompted a lot of reconsideration and reflection. I hope he will come to see the recent stories in the press and the blogosphere not as an attack to be countered, but as an opportunity to acknowledge the truth. Truth is important. Without truth, real reconciliation is impossible. I believe that God’s work in the world is toward the redemption and reconciliation of all things. I stand on the side of truth and redemption—not bitterness, not cheap grace, but the kind of real love and reconciliation that can encompass the ugliest truth.

I will end by saying that I recognize there are many former students whose experience was not like mine. Some students seemed to get along just great with the administration. Of those, not all were abusive and spiteful—many were kind, compassionate, genuine human beings with whom I simply disagreed on some issues. Other students kept their heads down and their opinions to themselves, and escaped relatively unscathed. Even others seemed to let the BS wash off them like ducks—it was just a place they went to college, and their real life was somehow elsewhere. I recognize the fact that other people experienced PHC very differently than I did.

I hope that those who disagreed with me (then or now) can extend the same courtesy, and acknowledge that just because my experience may have been different than theirs, does not mean that I am wrong and need to be silenced.

End of series.