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Silenced Voices, Unspeakable Questions: Lena Baird’s Story, Part Two

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

Homeschoolers U

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

< Part One

Women’s voices weren’t the only ones silenced.

LGBT students were condemned, or presumed to be nonexistent.

In a class called “Principles of Biblical Reasoning,” we read a book on natural law by J. Budzizewski. The author argued that all physical acts have inherent, universal meaning, and that a specific sex act between men was literally equivalent to valuing death instead of life. We discussed it in the abstract, without any acknowledgement that we might know gay men. Lesbians were not even mentioned. I cannot imagine how painful that classs must have been for gay or lesbian students. As a straight cis-woman, my voice was often silenced, but at least my existence was acknowledged and (selectively) validated.

Even straight male voices were sometimes silenced. I think it was my junior year when a male student wrote an op-ed for the student newspaper. It was called “Is Bono a better Christian than you?” He argued that concern for the poor might be an essential part of Christianity. While Bono was trying to help the poor, many evangelical Americans focused on less important things.

Apparently, this was a radical statement. The following week, Michael Farris (then-President of PHC) delivered a chapel message in response to the op-ed. He informed the entire student body that Bono was definitely not “a mature Christian.” Mature Christians, according to Farris, do not drink, smoke, or swear. Bono (again, according to Farris) does all of these things. Therefore, he’s not an a mature Christian, and no one should view him as role model.

Even at the time, I thought this was heavy-handed and misguided. What’s the point of a student paper, if students can’t express their opinions? Was this opinion really so shocking that it had to be refuted, publicly, without any opportunity for discussion? Was it really the college president’s job to tell us what to think?

*****

This episode was a harbinger of things to come.

Disagreeing with Farris was dangerous—not just for students, but also for professors.

I was a senior the year of the Great Schism, when several professors who disagreed with Farris left the school (one was fired, several others resigned in solidarity). That story is well documented elsewhere, but it was a dramatic upheaval for the college. When I was a student, I had classes with almost every professor on the faculty, and the few whose classes I didn’t take still knew my name. Eight years later, there are only three professors at the school who would recognize me, including Farris.

I was upset by the professors’ departure. I liked and respected them. Many of us had come to PHC thinking we had all the answers. These professors challenged us, pointing out that we weren’t asking the right questions yet. They encouraged us to respect other points of view—to really understand and engage with other ways of looking at the world, instead of just quoting Bible verses. I didn’t feel like all my questions were addressed, but in their classes, I did not feel dismissed or silenced.

Farris responded to their resignations with personal attacks. He immediately went on the defensive, informing the student body that these professors did not have “a high view of Scripture.” He repeatedly attacked their faith and their character, essentially calling them bad Christians. He did everything in his power to silence them, and to tell the student body that there was only one right side, only one valid opinion: his.

*****

My first two years at Patrick Henry, I had more freedom and more friends than I’d had since I was ten. My high school years had been lonely and isolating, and I was starving for friendship. While some classes were frustrating, others were led by excellent teachers, and I enjoyed the readings the class discussions. I even enjoyed the challenge of final exams, once I realized they weren’t going to kill me.

But by my senior year, I felt lonely and isolated again. Through a summer internship, I’d glimpsed an exciting world outside the small bubble of PHC. When I returned to campus, I felt trapped, like I was returning to a place I’d outgrown. I was also clinically depressed, and didn’t know it. I was processing trauma.

I was asking questions no one wanted to hear.

When things went wrong, my friends said: “God is in control.” They seemed to find it comforting. I didn’t know how to tell them that the idea of a sovereign God made everything worse. If God not only didn’t stop traumatic events, but actively caused them to happen, God was a monster. I couldn’t say that to them. So, once again, I was silent.

I think there were other students I could have talked to; but by senior year, I felt locked into my particular clique on campus. I was one of the good kids—one of the studious, rule-following lit majors. The “rebellious” kids had their own clique, and I’m sure they regarded me with suspicion. I thought some of them seemed cool, but I didn’t know how to reach out, and didn’t want to be disloyal to my friends. I’d broken a few rules, in my quiet way. I drank at my summer internship. I watched French art films on my college-issued laptop (nudity and sex scenes were against the rules). I’d started swearing, mostly in my head, but occasionally out loud. Once, in the dining hall, I almost dropped my tray, and a quiet damn slipped out. I looked around in terror, afraid that someone had heard me and that I would be called to the Dean’s office for a reprimand. Fortunately, no one was listening.

*****

After graduating, I kept trying to be the good Christian girl. It was the only role I knew how to play, but it chafed, like an outgrown pair of shoes. One evening, in a worship service, the pastor preached about David and Bathsheba. He got to the part where the prophet rebukes David, and I realized the prophet—speaking on behalf of God—was rebuking David for stealing another man’s property. Bathsheba was property. She was like a pet lamb.

In a quiet moment of de-conversion, I decided the prophet was wrong, and the God of that story was wrong, too. I was no one’s property. And I was sick to death of silence.

I entered that room thinking that I was still an evangelical Christian. I left it knowing that I was a feminist, and that I would rather have my own story—with all its doubts and questions—than the stories I’d grown up with, where the Bible was infallible, and women’s voices were devalued, and answers preceded and superseded questions.

Life hasn’t been easy since then, but I am finally free. In becoming myself, I became everything a PHC alumna is not supposed to be. I’m single. I’m not a virgin. I’m a feminist. I support marriage equality. I’m pro-choice. I voted for Obama (though I preferred Jill Stein). I don’t smoke, but I enjoy wine (red) and beer (stout), and tequila makes me believe that, while God may not be in control of much, she does love us.

And yes: I still believe in God—just not the patriarchal, sovereign, infallible God of the homeschool world.

I believe in God because I believe in love, and I believe in love because I’ve experienced it. Because I know people, gay and straight, agnostic and atheist, Buddhist and Lutheran, female and genderqueer and male—who live their lives with love, with freedom, with honesty. People who tell their stories, and accept the stories of others, without judgment. People who have given me the freedom, at last, to tell my own story with my own voice—and to be heard.

End of series.

The Reluctant Rebel: Gemma’s Story, Part Six

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 Five

Part Six: Spring of Senior Year and the Scandal of 2006

It wasn’t far into the spring semester before the whole situation went nuclear.

The college rescinded Dr. Root’s contract for the upcoming school year. The contracts had already been issued—it was not simply that they decided not to renew. They issued him a contract, and then rescinded it. Farris claims this was in response to something Dr. Root said in class that upset a parent. What is more likely is that the parent’s complaint was the excuse Farris had been looking for to rid himself of this troublesome professor, this man who mocked his Dean of Student Life and who had no compunction about publicly, in class and in writing, disagreeing with his idiosyncratic, sola scriptura pedagogical views.

This action by the college confused and grieved many students. The grief and confusion turned into a movement, the SaveRoot! Movement, complete with a protest website, orange lapel ribbons, and flyer distributions. Root’s de facto firing succeeded in radicalizing a few students, kids who wouldn’t even sign the letter the semester before but were now going around campus wearing orange. We weren’t optimistic, but we were earnest. We all knew, or suspected, that Root would not go alone. We loved our professors and wanted them to stay. So we wore orange, built websites, handed out flyers, and did our best to make it extremely clear to the administration that we would support a change of course while there was still time.

Wednesday, March 15. The Ides of March. A group of us, students and alumni, were watching The National play at the Black Cat in DC, despondent, trying to absorb the news that five professors had resigned in protest over Dr. Root’s treatment by the administration. We’d known it was coming, but that didn’t make it easier. Our fight was over, and we had lost. The band’s melancholy tunes seemed like a perfect reflection of our grief and anger.

I think this place is full of spies

I think they’re on to me

Didn’t anybody, didn’t anybody tell you

Didn’t anybody tell you how to gracefully disappear in a room?

This time, the magic wasn’t working. There was no gracefully disappearing, no absorption into the anonymous crowd this night. I love The National, but I’ve never enjoyed a show less. I felt alone and homeless. Everything we had worked so hard for had just gone up in smoke, and I still had two months of school left to endure. I didn’t belong there anymore, but I didn’t belong here either. I was stuck between worlds. I didn’t want to leave the club and go back to school, but the realization loomed that the people rubbing shoulders with me would never understand my story.

I would spend the rest of my life with Patrick Henry College on my resume, my Facebook, my Google search history.

To everyone outside the school, I would be identified with PHC and what it had become. To everyone inside, I was already identified with the enemy without, with “the world.” Was there even a place in the world for us

The alumni were drinking heavily. I was just trying not to cry.

You were right about the end.

It didn’t make a difference.

Everything I can remember,

I remember wrong.

The administration did not respond well to the mass resignation. Farris was clearly outraged and caught off guard. He quickly instructed the professors not to discuss the matter with students or the press. Farris, however, did not hesitate to discuss his opinions of the debacle with anyone who would listen. In typical fashion, he said some rather inflammatory and unflattering things about the professors, especially implying that they were less than genuinely Christian and didn’t believe in the Statement of Faith, which all members of the campus community had to sign.

Not unreasonably, the professors decided to defend themselves against these insinuations.

Friday, March 31, 2006 is one of those “I’ll always remember where I was” days. During one of his afternoon classes, Dr. Robert Stacey read a printout of the Statement of Faith to his class. Dr. Stacey was a founding faculty member, the chairman of the Government Department, the creator of the college’s flagship Freedom’s Foundations courses, my thesis advisor, and my dear friend. He read the Statement of Faith to his class and proclaimed his enthusiastic agreement with it. He reminded the students that it was his job to teach them according to this statement, and that if any of them thought he had failed in to do this, they would be better off getting up and leaving his class, and that he would not hold it against them.

After a few minutes, one daft sophomore girl did get up and leave (I say “daft” because, when asked later why she did this, she never could give a clear explanation). A couple of Farris’ toadies found her wondering the hallway, dazed and confused. When they got the story out of her, they immediately ran upstairs and told Farris.

What really happened next depends on who you ask. I didn’t have classes on Fridays; I was at my apartment during this whole event. At some point in the aftermath, I started getting desperate messages from students on campus that Dr. Stacey was being fired. I put on something dress-code compliant and drove over to campus. I found a pod of anxious, tearful underclassmen gathered outside the front doors of the main building. No one could tell me much other than that Dr. Stacey had said something during class, and now he was up in Farris’ office. I stuck my head in the building. It was mostly empty, as it usually was on Friday afternoons. No professors were in their offices. The two toadies were gliding around, looking smug and triumphant, but they would not deign to talk to me. The daft girl was sitting in the dining hall, crying.

I left; I needed to get back to my computer communicate with alumni and other off-campus students. At some point that evening, witnesses later told me, Farris came down to the dining hall and gave a red-faced rant in which he accused Dr. Stacey of “unprofessional conduct” and “forcing the students to choose sides.” Farris had given him the weekend to apologize or be fired. In reality, Dr. Stacey’s phone and email had been cut off by the time he got back to his office that afternoon. There was never actually any choice. A few of us students helped him pack up his office the next day.

Once again, this action by the administration only helped radicalize a few more students.

Dr. Stacey was beloved by the student body in a way Farris could never hope to be. It was abundantly clear to most observers that Dr. Stacey’s real crime had been embarrassing Mike Farris and little else; certainly, Farris’ behavior on that day could hardly be described as “professional” in any meaningful sense.

It is hard to overemphasize the severity of the emotional toll the professors’ resignations and, especially, Dr. Stacey’s firing inflicted on the students. The mood was funereal. We tried to keep up a sort of rueful sense of humor about the whole thing—at one point, we held a “wake” party commemorating the “death” of PHC as we knew it—but underlying the cynicism was a deep and sincere sorrow. This was not how we wanted things to turn out! We were not trying to ruin the school, we had been trying to save it! There were a lot of tears in the weeks following. I broke down anytime I had a chance to breathe and think—in the car, in the shower, at church.

The rest of the semester went by in a fury. Despite the fact that the real battle was over, there was plenty of fallout to manage, and keeping busy helped stave off the depression. The scandal hit the news and suddenly reporters everywhere wanted to talk to us, bloggers wanted to write about us, and alumni wanted to know what was happening as it happened. Managing the reporters was especially sticky. The college had always been happy to show off to reporters, but now they were having trouble controlling the message. The departing professors had been threatened not to speak out, but they refused to comply once Farris started maligning them in the press. The students didn’t have to be told not to speak without permission—the level of fear at this point was intense enough to keep most people in line. By the end of the semester, though, I felt like I didn’t have much left to lose. I chatted with my alumnus boyfriend about it a couple weeks before graduation:

boyfriend: Are you sure you want to talk to this reporter while you are in school?

‪me: if the professors are willing to talk, I am willing to talk

‪boyfriend: Don’t you fear reprisal before graduation?

‪me: yeah, a little

I mostly don’t care anymore

there’s really not much left they can do to me, or take from me

they can’t stop me from graduating because I talked to a reporter

In reality, they probably could have, but I called their bluff and they didn’t.

In the midst of all this, the Student Life drama continued apace. One day Dean Wilson stumped for the establishment candidate for Student Body President in chapel. The Student Senate (I was also a Senator) debated revising the election rules to prohibit this sort of interference in the future. Another day, they rescinded the rule allowing people to live off campus for the following school year, unless they already had leases. We scrambled to help friends get leases signed that day. It became a full-time job. “Every few hours or so there is more bad news,” I wrote in an email to a friend.

Meanwhile, I was also desperately trying to finish my last bit of coursework so I could walk across the stage and never look back.

I had a job to go to and post-graduation plans to line up. The pressure became unbearable at times. There was just no outlet for it. I began to entertain the thought, on my way to church or the grocery store, that I could just keep driving and never come back. Some days I would get as far as the Shenandoah River before collecting myself enough to go back home. I wasn’t the only one.

Email to a friend, May 10, 2006

[Name redacted] snapped the other day and just ran away.  Literally, just threw her stuff on the ground and ran the fuck away.  They found her, she didn’t go too far and it was in the middle of the day and people saw her, but it is frightening because we all have that impulse from time to time, but are rational enough to stop ourselves.  I wish I could run away though.

Towards the very end of the semester, I packed a cooler full of snacks and a bag full of books, drove out of town a ways, and rented a room at a cheap motel, with no internet access. I gave my boyfriend the room’s telephone number, but no one else knew where I was. I prayed no one would recognize my car from the road. I spent four days in that room, writing my thesis and trying to sleep. (I wasn’t sleeping much anymore; even when I got the chance, I was plagued with nightmares and woke up terrified and exhausted.) This was the closest I came to running away.

I returned to find the senior class up in arms. I had been elected one of two senior class representatives, so this was my problem, too. Some graduating seniors had invited Dr. Stacey to come watch them graduate, but he told them he’d been banned from campus.

The seniors wanted the administration to make an exception, for a few hours, so he could attend graduation. The other senior class representative and I were supposed to have a conference call with Farris about it. The other representative set it up, but we were both on the phone when Farris’ assistant answered it. She asked us to wait, then came back with the news that Farris would only speak to the other representative, not to me. My friend told her that this was not a personal request, but a request on behalf of the whole senior class. Therefore, both of the senior class representatives should be present on the call. The assistant asked us to wait again, then returned with the news that Farris was out of town. We would have to reschedule.

Ten minutes after this phone call, witnesses on campus saw Farris leave the main building, get in his SUV, and drive away. He wasn’t out of town; he just didn’t want to talk to me on the phone, so he lied about it.

The seniors wrote a letter to Farris with our request. It was signed by most of the graduating class. Not surprisingly, our request was denied. The administration wanted to avoid “incidents” and, apparently, a majority of seniors was insufficient. Since we seniors didn’t have unanimity on the issue, the college said approving our request wouldn’t be fair to those few who chose not to sign the letter.

Like Stacey’s firing, this bungled response only radicalized a few more people.

The seniors were also forced to cancel the annual Professor Appreciation dinner. The faculty and the student body were so firmly split between those loyal to the departing professors and those loyal to Farris and the administration, it would have been impossible to get everyone in the same room together and have any semblance of a good time. The mutual distaste was too strong.

The week before graduation was as close to rock-bottom as I’ve ever been. I wrote to an alumnus friend three days before graduation:

Today has just been hell.  Every day there is more.  Will we be living with the pain of all this for forever

They’ve told us we are not allowed to have any senior pranks.  Which I guess is just as well, I have work to do and couldn’t really afford the time.  But I say, no senior pranks – no senior gifts.  Screw them for taking the last bit of joy out of our miserable lives here.

The profs are drafting a response to Farris’ [most recent] accusation.  I am worried they will all boycott graduation… and I don’t think I can go through with it if they are not there… I am so weary of this.

From a chat with another alumnus friend, in response to some event—probably the publication of a media piece making the college look bad:

this is good – it proves all those bastards wrong who say we’re just a bunch of selfish whiners out for revenge

they do not even realize

revenge would not feel good right now

it is not even remotely what I want

what I want is everything they have taken from me

what I want is a college experience as it should have been

what I want is better health and not a life of pain

because we are “winning” now, and if this is all we wanted, we should be happy

but I’ve never been more depressed in my life

I don’t want this to come across as if the only things we were upset about were missing out on “senior pranks” and the typical “college experience.” You have to remember that the reason we were all at this college to begin with was so much more than this. If all we wanted was to party and have fun, we would have gone to a different school!

We believed in the mission and vision of the school as it had been sold to us, not as it turned out in reality. 

We had spent four or more years fighting tooth and nail to preserve and fulfill that mission. We believed in high-quality, Christian liberal arts education. We wanted to be leaders and world-changers. We were proud of the education we had received, and we loved the professors who had given it to us. We fought against the fundamentalists not because we hated their “rules,” but because their way of life was cannibalizing what was actually good about PHC. We had invested ourselves, our names, our reputations, our youth, our money in this fledgling project because we believed in it! Now our investment was being flushed away before our eyes, and the people destroying it were blaming the destruction on us. Is it any wonder we were left grieving and angry?

Graduation was the worst day of my entire life.

The departing professors did boycott. My extended family came to town for it, mostly oblivious to what was happening. I was miserable, and trying to put on a happy face for them just took more physical and emotional strength than I had left. Graduation morning, I forced myself to go through the motions and got myself to campus on time with a graduation gown on.

The lawn where the ceremony was being held was surrounded by people in uniform. Every campus security guard not graduating was on duty and lined up in a circle around the folding chairs and stage. Several Purcellville police cars lined the entrance to the campus.

This had never happened at a graduation before.

It occurred to me that they might really be scared of us! Rumors of “protests” and “incidents” had been circulating on campus, but “we” had not started them—we assumed “they” were fomenting the rumors to discredit “us.” The show of force was completely absurd; of course, no one had anything planned. Or at least, nothing requiring police and security. A growing, and by now significant, group of graduates didn’t feel like we could bring ourselves to shake hands with Farris. We had mused on what would happen if we chose not to do so. Alphabetically, I was the first of this group and the informal understanding was that if I didn’t shake his hand, the rest wouldn’t either. I went into the ceremony resigned to do it anyway. It was a motion I could go through like all the others. Just get it over with.

Then Farris threw a bomb. He was scheduled to speak last, after the diplomas had been conferred. But just before the diplomas, he hastily got up and started to speak. It was an intentionally inflammatory speech—a final dig at the professors, a parting shot, getting the last word in.

I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I was shaking with rage and I couldn’t breath. What was the point of this? They weren’t even here—and I was glad they weren’t! I looked over my shoulder at some of my compatriots. They gaped back, wide-eyed in disbelief. Even some of those not “on our side” were sighing and looking grim. It was an embarrassingly petty act. He’s doing this because he has a captive audience, I thought. He went early because he knows we can’t leave if we haven’t gotten our diplomas yet! One last, final confirmation that it wasn’t about us students at all—it never was—it was only about him, his beliefs, his vision, his agenda, his petty scorekeeping.

In the back of the audience, the local Presbyterian pastor got up and walked out.

Farris finished, and the graduates stood to line up for our diplomas. I was shaking and dizzy. Do I shake his hand? Now, after this? I could barely walk in a straight line. At some point before I reached the stage, through my anger, I reasoned with myself that I had to be the bigger person. I could not react to petty with petty. I could not put that burden on the shoulders of those who walked behind me, even though I know they would have carried it.

Or maybe I’m just a coward. But I shook his hand.

Behind me, unprompted by anything but Farris’ behavior and his own conscience, a friendly, non-rebellious student with an unimpeachable reputation shook Farris’ hand too, looked him in the eye, and said —

“Thanks for ruining what should have been the best day of my life.”

In retrospect, I think this was the most fitting response.

I left as quickly as I could, dragging my gown behind me. My boyfriend pointed out that it was dragging the ground and I said I didn’t care —

I wished I could run over it with my car.

Part Seven >

The Reluctant Rebel: Gemma’s Story, Part Five

HA Editorial Team11 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 Four

Part Five: Fall of Senior Year

My senior year was a year of crisis for the school.

So much has been written about the academic freedom scandal of 2006 that it doesn’t seem necessary to rehash the whole story. The only points I want to make are 1) that the scandal didn’t come out of thin air—it had been building for years as the tension between the academic and cultural/religious sides of the campus became increasingly untenable—and 2) that it took a severe toll, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and physical, on the students as well.

The troubles started during freshman orientation. Farris gave a speech during the orientation in which he claimed that Patrick Henry students only studied materials other than the Bible for purposes of “opposition research.” According to his interpretation of the doctrine of sola scripture, all necessary truth comes from the Bible. Everything else was just “learning the enemy’s playbook.” Even Plato and Aristotle could not teach us anything worthwhile. We were only to study them to become knowledgeable about “the world.” This was and still is a laughably simplistic viewpoint for any Christian, much less the president of an institution of higher learning, to hold. The faculty, including the feared and respected Academic Dean, publicly disagreed with this position, which embarrassed and enraged Farris.

A few weeks later came the first of what is now an annual event at PHC: the Faith & Reason lecture.

It was given by Todd Bates, our unassuming theology professor. He used some writings by St. Augustine to form the basis of his argument for why Christians should study the liberal arts. On the day of the lectures, Farris invited himself to the post-lecture discussion panels, where he asked obnoxious and uncharitable questions and famously accused St. Augustine of heresy. According to his simplistic way of thinking, if St. Augustine was a heretic, then nothing he said could possibly be worthwhile.  He claimed he was only using his “academic freedom” to join in the campus debate.

I don’t think it ever occurred to him that academic freedom is for people who don’t have power, not for those who do.

Furthermore, his ignorant assertions were, again, publicly corrected by both students and professors. Embarrassed once more, he threatened Dr. Bates’ job and demanded the faculty put an end to the Faith and Reasons lectures (they refused).

Shortly after this, the Academic Dean resigned to take a position in the Bush administration. I forwarded the email announcement to my dad and told him to watch and see if more faculty didn’t resign soon after.

With the departure of this Academic Dean, the faculty suddenly felt exposed and unprotected. The events at the beginning of the semester had really drawn Farris’ ire, but in addition to this, they were increasingly targeted by Paul Wilson. In accordance with his trenchant anti-intellectual streak, Wilson had decided that the faculty were the ones responsible for fomenting “rebellion” in the student body, and he was determined to do something about it.

As usual, the rulebook had been overhauled over the summer. The major change this year was that students who witnessed any offense, no matter how minor, by any other member of the campus community, including professors, were required to turn the offender in to Student Life. Otherwise, the witnesses would be punished as if they had committed the violation themselves. This change obliterated whatever miniscule level of trust still existed amongst the student body, although as usual, some students couldn’t be happier:

An email, sent Aug. 30, 2005

From: some freshman guy

To: all students

I have a great respect for Dean Wilson and the RA’s who uphold morality and dignity even when others think it is extreme.
The rules put in place have greatly increased my respect for the school as a whole and I’m proud to be called a student here.

Let’s be careful in our mockery of the rules or just plain complaining and rebellion. Rightness trumps reasonability. Do what is right whether you think it is reasonable or not. How much do you love God? Enough to obey authority?

In addition, Dean Wilson enlisted his RA’s and favorite students to help him target and punish students on his “bad” list, and to keep an eye on the faculty as well. They started monitoring the discussions in the classes of certain professors, and would go immediately to Dean Wilson’s office after class to report what they had heard. As the student body became aware of these practices, students became more and more hesitant to speak up in class, lest something they said be used against them.

The professors were more audacious, and started mocking Wilson publicly. This was encouraging to students, but only increased the tension between the faculty and administration, and each side’s favorite students. One professor, Dr. Erik Root, was especially outspoken. He was personally offended that Dean Wilson would so overstep the bounds of his authority and intrude, even via proxy, into the classroom.

The situation was bad enough by about the midpoint of the semester that a group of students, encouraged by some senior administration officials and a couple of Trustees, decided to do something about it. Many of these students were younger and still optimistic about what could be accomplished, especially now that we apparently had the ear of the Board of Trustees.

I helped organize the little movement, but I saw it as essentially a last-ditch effort.

We decided to write a letter to Dr. Farris, outlining our concerns with the campus culture and the office of student life, and emphasizing how these concerns were impacting our ability to learn in the classroom. I can say, even with many years of maturity and distance in between, the letter was legitimately fair, measured, and respectful. We did not name-call or use inflammatory or exaggerated language. We repeatedly emphasized that our overriding concern was for the future success of the college we loved so much. The letter made four points:

First, we pointed out that the school lacked any official system of due process with regard to alleged rule violations. Students were accused, convicted, and punished without any kind of transparent process, without any chance to defend themselves, and without knowing the evidence against them. Furthermore, students were routinely punished for violating “rules” not actually enumerated in the handbook, and lived in fear of arbitrary enforcement.

Secondly, we described what we saw as a culture of suspicion on campus, reinforced by the new rule requiring students to report each other or face equal punishment. Again, we emphasized that this culture of suspicion was exacerbated by the fact that students were maligned or punished for behavior that broke no specific rule at all—things like perceived attitudes, offhand comments, or unorthodox opinions.

Thirdly, we pointed out that free thought and free speech on campus with regard to student rules or administration policy, no matter how innocent or well-intentioned, was treated as thought crime. Students who submitted without question were held up as moral exemplars, while students who asked questions or voiced opinions—even if they still obeyed!—were denigrated as rebels and troublemakers.

Finally, we argued that these three factors combined to have a chilling effect on the classroom. Students were afraid to speak up in class, lest they share an opinion, or even just raise an uncomfortable point, that might land them on the “black list.” Professors worried about their ability to teach the liberal arts to students who were indoctrinated into an illiberal, submissive-to-authority mindset. We concluded that the college was engaging in self-defeating behavior. The Office of Student Life believed its mission was to create a culture of submissive conformists, while the faculty believed their mission was to create free thinkers who could lead the nation and shape the culture.

The college was at war with itself.

Even with the tacit approval and encouragement of higher-ups, we had a hard time gathering student signatures for the letter. Many students, especially those employed by the college, privately professed their support, but were too scared to actually sign the letter. Others promised to sign, but backed out at the last minute.

Email to co-author, Nov. 26, 2005

[Name redacted] called me this morning and backed out of the whole thing.  Not just the delegation – she doesn’t want any part in the whole project.  Because I had put her name on the delegation email to Dr. Farris, she felt the need to email him and Dean Wilson and tell them she was backing out.  I had already told her by email that it was okay if she didn’t want to be on the delegation, we could replace her with someone else, but apparently she got really scared while she was home and wants to make it extremely clear to everyone that she is no longer a part of this.  I know this is probably bad, but she called me right after I woke up and I couldn’t think of a reason to tell her not to do this.  I did talk her out of copying her email to all-students.

We ended up with about 75 signatures, or one-third of the student body. A smaller delegation of students took the letter to Farris. The meeting was somewhat productive. Farris promised to create a committee to review student life rules and processes, and wrote an op-ed in the student paper reiterating his commitment to freedom of speech. The younger signatories were encouraged. I was not convinced, but I was glad we had done something.

As we found out the following semester, our letter was nothing more than a doomed last-ditch effort. Once again, Farris’ “commitment to free speech” was only for appearance’s sake.

He just couldn’t refrain from taking action against speech he disagreed with.

Part Six >

Through the Darkest Nights of My Life: Asher’s Story

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

Homeschoolers U

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

I’m a rising junior at Patrick Henry College.

You invited us to share our own stories rather than speculating in universal commentary, and I appreciate that invitation. The best place for me to start, though, might be with a bit of commentary on a universal aspect of life at PHC. I think it illustrates and introduces well what I hope to say.

First, a little background: at PHC, we have corporate chapel three times a week. In the spring semester, usually one of those weekly slots will be set aside for senior testimonies. In the space of one chapel service at about 20 minutes each, two graduating seniors have the opportunity to reflect, thank, and share the story of what God has done in their life and time at PHC with the whole student body.

As a freshmen, I didn’t know well most of the seniors who shared at the podium, though I knew of practically all of them (the perks and sometimes frustration of a tiny campus like ours). Some were more eloquent or funnier or more spiritually insightful than others. Some of them merited spontaneous, almost immediate standing ovations from the whole student body. Some of them simply produced appreciative applause. Sometimes the audience was awkwardly dragged by politeness into standing, or even more awkwardly divided between standing and not standing. Whatever the effect might have been on the student body as a whole, though, I know how it affected me. I don’t remember every life detail they shared or spiritual insight they told us. But I walked away changed.

Some of their life stories were unspectacular and ordinary from a worldly standpoint. Others reached down deep and opened up their darkest parts: struggles with crippling depression, debilitating eating disorders, pornography addictions, and more. Yet through nearly every last one of them, I saw the same story repeat itself again and again: a driven, determined young person who would somehow change the world – or perhaps just their own world, and escape the long-worn chains and burdens of the past – and prove that they were worth something. That they were worth loving. Then, failure after failure would set in… frustration and anger, despair and sometimes deep darkness would descend. And slowly, slowly, gentle hands would guide them out of their darkness and bondage… and they would re-learn what it means to need and accept grace. Redemption would do its slow, painful, but sure work. And senior after senior, while often admitting that their journey was incomplete and would extend far beyond the halls of PHC, would stand as a witness to the redeeming grace of God on a life too broken for anything else.

I walked away from those testimonies a different person.

I was awestruck to think that so much pain, struggle, hope, desperation, loneliness, longing, fear, striving, failure, victory, joy, sorrow, love, brokenness, and redemption could be possible underneath the daily exterior. These stories were drawn up, streaming and bleeding with the truth of lives lived, from depths too deep for our minds to fathom, much less search out in full. And it blew my mind to think that these kinds of stories were happening all around me without me having any idea. So I prayed a dangerous prayer – to know the hidden pain and suffering around me, and somehow, to ease it by bearing a part of it.

The fall of my sophomore year, my prayer was answered beyond anything I could have dreamed, asked, or imagined. I saw more of broken, hurting, messed up humanity than I’d ever seen before… and through that anguish, I saw hope, redemption, and beauty as I could not have conceived of in my wildest imaginings. It’s a long story; far longer and deeper and richer than my feeble words could share even if you were interested in hearing its entirety.

A crucial part of that story, though, are the brothers and sisters who were with me through every part of it. Through the darkest nights of my life – through seeing friends dearest to my heart battling weariness, grief, depression, cutting, eating disorders, and even suicidal thoughts – people were there for me when I needed them most. Whatever I needed – words of wisdom, the wordless comfort of a hug, a willing recipient for me to vomit my troubles on (if you think about it, it’s a pretty accurate picture of the kind of friend we all need at times), and endless prayers – they gave generously, lovingly, and unfailingly. Even before we entered that season of more darkness than I’ve ever known before, the friendships I’ve cultivated at PHC have been some of the deepest and most meaningful of my life. That may well be the case with most college experiences – but there’s a unique camaraderie and love that comes with being in a war-zone together. Under fire, bonds are welded that will not be easily broken.

I say all this for a few reasons, I suppose, but this might be the main takeaway: if you step foot on our tiny, NOVA campus, you will see many things. You’ll see students strolling in their business causal best as they laugh together between classes or attentively (usually) take notes in the classroom. You’ll hear debates on predestination, deep philosophical discussions on the Lord of the Rings, and no shortage of some of the most awful puns I’ve heard in my life in the dining hall. You’ll see us holed up in our rooms alone with Plato or in small platoons with Call of Duty (at least in the guy’s dorms, since we’re not co-ed; ask the girls what they do in theirs). You’ll see our jocks practically living in the weight room, and couples infesting our lobbies and lounges. During finals season, you’ll see us slouched over our desks on many a late night hammering away at a paper or procrastinating while we pretend to do so. During chapel, you’ll see us raising our voices to praise the One to whom we owe everything in one of the most beautiful voice ensembles I’ve heard or sung in (though you may well see a few people texting or struggling to stay awake during the speaker). On Sunday nights, you’ll see some of us gathered around a darkened room or out in the open night air, the resonance of a guitar mingling with voices of worship and the whispers of people praying fervently for each other.

Depending on who you are, there are other things you’d see too. You might see a strong Christian community that you’d love your son or daughter to be a part of, or a mob of young people emanating naivety and arrogance in the form of homeschoolers who think they can change the world. What you see in that case, either way, might be determined more by what you expect to see than what’s before you.

You’d see all these things and many more – but there’s a lot you wouldn’t see too.

If you had eyes that could penetrate walls and souls, you might see a bit more.

You’d see good Christian kids with burdens, pains, and hidden tears like everyone else. You’d see some strive harder in hopes that they can earn the love of God, in desperation and loneliness, thinking somehow that they have to do this on their own and not let anyone see behind their façade. You’d see conversations stretching into the deep of night between the hurting and those who feel the hurt just as deeply out of love. You’d see patient listening and long walks around the Farris wheel or tennis court in the dead of night, and tears of relief flooding out on sympathetic shoulders in the dorm rooms. You’d see the prayers, you’d see the hope that comes through giving and receiving love; you’d see the redemption. You’d see that there’s a lot more going on at PHC than just Mock Trial and a crowd of homeschoolers doing homework on the weekends.

If you could see past our exteriors, you’d also see a good deal of soul-weariness, from both the intensity of academics and the burdens of life. You’d see our insecurities and fears, our lonely nights spent wrestling with our various doubts and demons. You’d see hearts perhaps prone to gossip more than they should be, too often stepping carelessly in and around one of the easiest pitfalls of a small, tightly-knit community. You’d see the stubborn pride and judgmental cynicism that God is still weeding out of our hearts, and all of the areas in which we are still being sanctified, made more like the God we fall desperately short of.

At our very core, however, I pray that you would see not homeschoolers, not conservatives, not even college students or young people with drive and talent, but a broken, inadequate sinners who are being made into the image of Christ.

That is my heartbeat at PHC, and I know I’m not alone in that.

Some of that is more a hope than a description of the way PHC is now, and perhaps most of that entails far more universal commentary than you were asking for. What I can say is that I could only ever say any of this because I have experienced it personally, deeply, and repeatedly. More importantly, a core of that very experience is sharing it with many others around me. And I build my hope only off of what I have already seen; though I have seen much brokenness, I have seen the pieces redeemed into beauty – and only because it has been done so many times and so faithfully before, do I have any hope that the work will continue in and among us.

I love PHC. Like all things worth loving on this earth, I know that PHC is far from perfect, and I do my best to let my love give me a more accurate view (not a white-washed one) of PHC’s flaws and shortcomings. And as the student charge at our most recent graduation reminded us, as America will one day go the way of all nations, so PHC will one day go the way of all human institutions. It too was pass away. Yet, when I speak of the PHC I love, I don’t mean a little physical campus out in Loundon County, or even a vision of a liberal arts curriculum centered on Christ. I mean the people. The community of PHC will continue to grow and change over time; but I know that they will far outlast whatever endures of PHC institutionally.

What will remain is this: a broken people redeemed by a grace greater than we will ever know.

That, as best as I can describe it in a too-long-but-too-brief account like this, is what PHC is to me.

Silenced Voices, Unspeakable Questions: Lena Baird’s Story, Part One

HA Editorial Team4 Comments

Homeschoolers U

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

My junior year at PHC, I was in a small creative writing group. We met every few weeks, and passed around our recent works—short stories, poems, novel excerpts—and wrote comments and critiques in the margins. One week, I wrote a poem in response to a chapel message that had upset me. It was yet another story, from another man, about how something terrible had almost happened—but because of faith in God, disaster was averted at the last moment.

I was sick of hearing those stories. My life experience had been nothing like that, but no one had ever told a story like mine in chapel. So I wrote:

You listen to the story, confident,
knowing the happy ending will arrive,
and leave you satisfied, your mind content,
your questions answered – yes, he did survive:
the usual miracle. But I could tell
a story with another kind of end –
an end of dreams and hopes, a glimpse of hell –
and would you smile, applauding calmly, then?
No, better to keep silent. For till you
have wept for a miracle that did not come,
and found all answers hollow and untrue,
your questions mocked beneath a dying sun –
till you have faced the dark with empty hands –
you will not hear; you cannot understand.

Not a great sonnet, by any means; but it expressed how I felt. The chapel message was not my story. I was struggling to process trauma, and loss, and tragedy. (I was probably clinically depressed, but I didn’t know anything about mental health, because that was another topic no one discussed.) I didn’t feel like I could say this to any of friends. So I said it in a poem, and even that felt like pushing a boundary—saying something people might not accept.

When I got my poem back, with comments, no one seemed to realize I was talking about myself. I don’t have the sheet of paper with comments anymore, but one girl wrote something very similar to this: “This person just doesn’t get it. God is good—someone needs to tell him!”

Not only did she assume that I was writing from the perspective of a fictional character …. she also assumed that the fictional character was male.

I knew all about God. That was the problem. What I knew about God—the narrative of Christian evangelical homeschool culture, the only framework for life I’d been exposed to—did not fit my life, at all.

And even when I dared to speak—obliquely, through creative writing—no one heard my questions.

 

*****

My literature professor liked talking about worldviews. He considered most authors inadequate; their lack of “a Christian worldview” invalidated—or at least diminished—their artistic merits. He talked, frequently, about the need for “a Christian renaissance” in modern literature. From what he said, I got the impression that literature by Christians pretty much stopped with Lewis and Tolkien. Gradually, I realized that this was not accurate. Gilead won the Pulitzer Prize while I was at PHC, but I never heard it mentioned in class. I discovered Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Graham Greene outside of PHC. They weren’t mentioned as examples of Christian writers, either—possibly because they were Catholics, and Catholics were suspect, at best. (Tolkien, despite his Catholicism, seemed to be infallible.)

I wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to express my faith through my writing; but by my junior year, my faith was more doubt than certainty, more questions than answers. I liked O’Connor and Greene and Percy because they wrestled with doubt; their stories expressed a complicated, conflicted, messy faith.

But there wasn’t room for faith like that in class discussions.

There wasn’t room for my story.

*****

My literature professor also talked a lot about gender roles. He said, “If a wife gets up to pray and have her quiet time at seven in the morning, the husband should get up at six.” As leader of the home, apparently the husband had to outdo his wife in everything. It wasn’t a model of marriage that appealed to me—but it was what most of my fellow students seemed to want. They talked a lot about how men were leaders, and women were supposed to support men in leadership. Almost all my friends thought the husband should lead in marriage. Most of them also thought only men should hold leadership roles in the church.

I found this baffling. One day, in the dining hall, I questioned the logic of male leadership. “What if I’m a good musician,” I said, “and the choice for music leader is between me and a man? What if the man doesn’t know how to read music?”

“It doesn’t matter,” my roommate said. “You should step back, and let him lead.”

There were five or six of us at the table. I was the only one who thought knowledge mattered more than gender. I secretly thought women could be pastors, too, but I was afraid to say that. Instead, I listened while they all explained to me that God created all men as leaders.

Later, in literature class, my professor said: “God calls a man to a vision. He calls a woman to a man.”

What did that mean for my dreams? My visions? Couldn’t a man and a woman both have dreams, and support each other in pursuing them?

He didn’t open the floor for discussion. There wasn’t room for my voice.

*****

Gender roles didn’t just factor into literature class and dining hall discussions—they permeated campus culture. The female professors were all single. The male professors were all married. Only men were invited to give chapel messages. On the rare occasions when a woman spoke, we had “split chapel”: the female students met in one room, and listened to the woman speaker. The male students met elsewhere, and listened to a man.

Only male students were allowed to lead singing in chapel. Female students could accompany singing on the piano, if they wished, or they could back up a male singer with guitar. But they were never permitted to stand at the podium and lead singing—except when we had split chapel. If only women were in the room, a woman could lead singing.

In student elections, the candidates for student body president were always male. At least one female student ran for student body vice president, but she wasn’t elected.

Part Two >

Orange Hair and Feminist Leanings: Mallory Faulkner’s Story

HA Editorial Team6 Comments

Homeschoolers U

To those it may concern,

Hi! My name is Mallory, and I’m a Sophomore at PHC. A friend forwarded me your request for stories about experiences with the college, so I thought I’d tell you mine.

My experience with PHC has honestly been wonderful.

I’ve wanted to come to this school since I was 14. In 2011 and 2012, I was lucky enough to be able to come to TeenCamps and had an absolutely amazing time. I had always been a weird unhappy outcast in conservative Christian homeschool circles, even being raised in said circles. I got to PHC and was instantly welcomed and loved and made to feel as though I was a member of a family, orange hair and feminist leanings and all.

I am a self-identified feminist with a tendency for crazy hair colors, rock music, inappropriate humor, and combat boots. I was a little apprehensive about being a full time student at PHC, especially with the dress code. I knew it was what God wanted me to do, though, so I went and found out I was completely wrong. I tend to keep my hair a bit more conservative at school in the interest of being professional but I’ve found friends who like music even louder and harder than mine, people from all walks of life who share my faith and sense of humor and still get good grades. I’ve been blessed enough to find friend who share my views and ones who will challenge them as well.

PHC has been accused of being narrow minded and a bubble environment. Some of that is true.

PHC can be a bit of a bubble and we all share a common Christian background but it’s surprising how much diversity there is within that. The faculty and staff have worked very hard to create an environment where students are allowed to discuss, think through, and hold many different views. Dr. Spinney, for instance, teaches History of the United States 1 and 2. He spends a lot of his class time moderating student discussions on various moral issues including Aztec sacrifices, women’s roles throughout history, and policy questions like the Mexican War. He usually states his views on the debates and what he believes to be the truth at the end of class but allows students to discuss whatever they’d like. He, above all, never insists in any way that students agree with him.

All of the professors try to strike a balance between expressing their views of truth and allowing for other ways of thought.

They make mistakes sometimes, of course, but they’re very good at striking that balance. My experience has been that, many times, Dr. Favelo, who teaches History of Western Civilization 1 and 2, goes out of his way to make students consider points of view other than their own. Our Theology professor, Dr. Cox, is especially good at giving an even handed overview of all points of view on any given subject – even subjects of theology that are rather controversial such as speaking in tongues.

This is getting long so I’ll wrap it up.

I really can’t sum up my time at PHC in one email. There have been so many moments where I’ve been challenged academically, emotionally, and spiritually. My time there has stretched and grown me in some ways I could never imagine. PHC has also given me a loving community and a family that accept me just the way I am. None of us are perfect, and PHC has it’s share of frustrating bureaucracy and the growing pains that come with a new and expanding community. However, these people know my quirks and they respect me, worship with me, challenge me, and encourage me on a daily basis.

My time at the college has been some of the best of my life. 

The Reluctant Rebel: Gemma’s Story, Part Four

HA Editorial Team5 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 Three

Part Four: Junior Year

I started my junior year with a panic attack as my mom and I drove back onto campus.

Of course, I had no idea what I was experiencing at the time—the overwhelming sense of dread or drowning, my heart beating wildly, fighting the sudden urge to flee the car, the campus, the world… By the time we parked, I had composed myself enough to articulate something like “I don’t want to be here anymore” to my concerned mother. Terrified and on the verge of tears, I gritted my teeth, got out of the car, and resumed life as usual.

It was the worst semester yet.

Dean Wilson and the Office of Student Life had retaliated to the loosening of certain rules the previous year by revising the rule book, especially the dress code and the music and movies standards.

The dress code at PHC had always been two-pronged. During normal business hours, students were required to dress in “business casual” outside of their dorms. One purpose of the dress code was to describe the rules for this professional dress code. The other purpose of the dress code was to maintain modesty standards. The burden of this second prong of the dress code fell primarily upon the women (though men sometimes got in trouble for “rebellious” hair styles and such).

This particular edition of the rulebook had revised the dress code for women on both counts. It clarified certain aspects of the professional, business-casual standards in such a way as to exclude certain modest, but patently unprofessional looks, like denim jumpers. It also re-worded the modesty code in a rather confusing way. There was outrage from the students on both counts. Apparently, some of the more conservative students were upset because they literally did not have enough clothes left to dress themselves according to the professional standard. (I happened to be in favor of the professionalization of the women’s dress code.) This half of the new rules was almost immediately rescinded.

The backlash over the modesty rules, however, prompted a women’s-only chapel to explain and clarify. In this chapel, the female students were informed that the modesty standards were worded in such a way as to give a positive impression to outside inquirers and prospective students. We current students, however, should understand that we needed to hold ourselves to a “higher standard.” This higher standard, apparently, was a little too “high” to codify in the actual rulebook, lest outsiders or prospective students think us too restrictive. Their solution to this dilemma was to install a volunteer “dean of women,” the wife of a member of the college’s Board of Trustees, who could help us with our wardrobes and decide for us what was appropriate, and what was not.

I do not mean this story in any way to besmirch this woman or her family. She was a kind, fair, and well-intentioned person. Most of us women were happy to have a sympathetic female authority figure on campus to talk to, and not just about our wardrobes.

But I want to emphasize the absurdity of a dress code written so vaguely and arcanely that this kind, patient woman had to come to our dorm rooms and endure hours of “fashion show” by exasperated and cynical female students, and to decide (often to our disappointment) which items of our clothing passed her test and which did not.

The movie standards had been updated in response to the advent of laptop computers with DVD players in them. When the college began in 2000, students mostly watched movies in communal lounges, on college-provided televisions equipped with censoring devices for bad language. There may have been explicit standards for movie content—I don’t remember—but the fact that movies had to be watched in public, and that random people routinely walked through the lounges at any time of day or night, meant that most people self-censored effectively.

But once students could watch movies on their laptops in the privacy of their own dorm room, the administration saw a need for explicit rules governing content. I don’t remember the details, but I do remember they were strict enough to exclude Braveheart, and indeed, Braveheart was even mentioned specifically as an example of a movie that failed to meet the content standards.

I will leave you to ponder the irony of a campus full of homeschool graduates forbidden from watching Braveheart.

I don’t remember the details of the music rules either, but it was around this time that iTunes introduced the ability to share music libraries across a shared network. The entire campus was a single network, so suddenly we all had access to each other’s music libraries. This was fantastic for those of us who were audiophiles. Apparently, it was also a great opportunity for pharisaical students to go spying. Most people with potentially offensive music had the good sense either to hide their libraries from the network or, at least, to give them anonymous names. This didn’t stop the pharisees from sending out pompous all-student emails expressing their shock and horror over, for instance, the vaudevillian gruesomeness of Decemberist songs they had stumbled upon over the network. Would Jesus listen to music like this?? As with most other things, the message—explicitly or implicitly—was that those of us who enjoyed such music were insufficiently Christian.

This all took place in the first couple of weeks or so.

The rest of the semester went by in a blur of exhaustion, depression, emotional breakdowns, and 6-8 hours a day translating Greek. I was also taking two courses from a psychopathological Sovietologist who dressed (and thought and taught) like it was still 1985. She trimmed her nails into little triangles, like bird claws, and tapped them ominously on the table during class. On the first day of class, she described how she once woke a student sleeping in her class by slamming a heavy textbook onto the table next to his head.   She held her classes at 8am on purpose, because she knew we were all exhausted and she wanted to… I’m not sure what she wanted, actually.

But she seemed to enjoy torturing her students.

She deliberately withheld information from me that thwarted my ability to make good grades in her class, and then blamed me for not knowing what she decided not to tell me. She called me into her office on various pretexts, only to berate me to the point of tears over my grades. Then, after ruining my chances in her classes, she refused to sign off on my application for a study-abroad opportunity, telling me that, as far as she was concerned, I “had no future in academia.”

I decided to transfer. Up until this point, at least the wonderful professors and classes had been worth enduring all the BS from student life. Now, I had nothing going for me. My panic attacks and emotional breakdowns continued with growing intensity. I couldn’t take it anymore.

But I wanted to transfer to another private, liberal arts school nearby, so I could stay in touch with my friends. My parents didn’t want to pay for that out of pocket, and there was very little scholarship money available for transferees from non-accredited institutions. My only other choices were to attend a state school back home, or find a way to make PHC work.

It was a choice that just didn’t feel like much of a choice. I stayed.

I switched majors to get away from the Soviet psychopath, and moved off campus to get away from the culture and give myself some space to breathe. These changes made life tolerable, for a while.

I don’t want to imply that we never had a good time at school. My friends and I enjoyed some amazing times together and grew so close I couldn’t imagine life without them (a decade later, I still can’t). It’s just that most of the things we enjoyed doing, even if they weren’t technically against the rules, would have been “disapproved” of by the campus monitors.

For example, we all loved music and movies. It was hard to take the new campus media rules as anything but a personal attack. So we took our activities off campus. We watched forbidden movies in various students’ off-campus housing. We went to indie rock shows at the Black Cat and other clubs in the city, losing ourselves in the anonymity of the crowd, away from the eyes of the watchers, pretending to be normal for an hour or two. We wore our hand-stamps to class the next day like a secret sign.

The media was more than just illicit entertainment; it helped us process our experiences and emotions. The lyrics of longing, loss, and defiance by bands like the Mountain Goats and Neutral Milk Hotel became our mantras.

I am gonna make it through this year

If it kills me.

                        – The Mountain Goats

Now we must pack up every piece

Of the life we used to love

Just to keep ourselves

At least enough to carry on

                        – Neutral Milk Hotel

Needless to say, all of us still professed Christianity—a requirement for our continued enrollment, at the least. But the legalism, religious bullying, and anti-intellectualism we encountered at PHC had pushed us away from the evangelicalism of our youth and sent us in search of other expressions of our faith. Most of us found our way into liturgical traditions. Near the end of my junior year, a younger journalism major approached me and a group of my friends about a story he wanted to write. He had noticed a correlation between students like us, who had a deep academic interest in philosophy, history, or literature, and attendance at liturgical churches. He asked us our opinion about that connection, and why we chose to attend Episcopal or Presbyterian churches rather than the evangelical churches that most PHC students went to. He assured us that his story was only for a class assignment, not for publication. We believed him and answered candidly.

His story was published in the campus newspaper. The administration went ballistic.

We were scolded, mocked, accused from on high with the same old charges: snobbery, intellectual elitism, and the unsubtle implication that we were deficient Christians at best, and more likely wolves in sheep’s clothing. The local Presbyterian pastor and Episcopal priest were temporarily banned from campus. Fellow students began making snide comments about “popery” and “vain tradition” in the lunchroom or in class. The author of the article tried to defend himself, and us, and the whole thing blew over by the next fall, but it was one more nail in the coffin. No matter how I tried, I would never be good enough for these people.

Most of my friends graduated that year. Being the “intellectual elitists” that we were, they scattered to various graduate programs across the country. Only a couple remained in DC. But we all stayed in touch, emailing or chatting weekly if not daily.

That summer, I stayed in DC and interned for the federal government. At this point, the physical symptoms of the pressure I was under became undeniable and troublesome. I was exhausted. I would commute to and from work with my boss, and despite my best efforts, I would fall asleep in the car. Sometimes I would fall asleep while he was talking to me. Sometimes I would fall asleep at my desk. Most days, I would get home from work, eat something, and go straight to bed. I was always cold and could never seem to get warm. My hair fell out in handfuls. Everything felt like it was spinning out of control. I stopped doing things I enjoyed in my free time because I didn’t feel strong enough, or energetic enough, or happy enough to enjoy them.

That drowning, panicking feeling was with me daily now.

I turned 21 that summer and celebrated like most 21-year-olds would. But it was hard to enjoy it. Technically, because I was in the DC area and my internship was for credit, I was still subject to the PHC rulebook. My birthday celebration was definitely against the rules. And it’s hard to enjoy normal things like that when there’s always the possibility, no matter how remote, that some talebearer might have gotten lost in Adam’s Morgan that night and seen you walk out of a bar.

Part Five >

Better Late Than Never — The Senior Testimony I Never Gave: Adina’s Story

HA Editorial Team7 Comments

Homeschoolers U

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

I never gave a senior testimony at Patrick Henry College — not because I was an introvert or hated public speaking (I was a government major and I love an audience), but because I was afraid of what I could and could not say.

Now that I’ve had time to look back on my experiences at PHC let this be my senior testimony.

I started at PHC way back when there was still a “strong” distance learning program so I was physically on campus for only my Junior and Senior years of college. I fought fiercely against the stay-at-home-daughters movement all through highschool to be able to attend PHC at all, and my first two years of college I studied at home through DL for several reasons. First, it was significantly less expensive than moving to Virginia, and second, I would be able to spend more time with my family (read: remain under my father’s direct authority and command) for an extra two years.

Those two years spent in DL were hardly much more than an extension of my homeschooling. I’d in my living room reading and being intensely antisocial, though the latter was not entirely my own choice. I was one of two girls at my church at that time to actually *gasp* attend college. I loved my classes, read all of the assigned reading, and couldn’t get enough of what I was learning — but there was no real change in my life. My story here will therefore only be about the last two years of my undergrad career.

I arrived on campus a starry-eyed, twenty-one year old, insecure junior, thrilled to finally be “on my own” at my dream college trying to conceal as best I could that I was one of those uncool homeschoolers who’d been raised wearing skirts, surrounded by ATI and stay at home daughters, and was currently mired in a dreadful pseudo courtship situation.

I honestly don’t know what I was expecting when I came to PHC, but I got something very different. My insecurity and self doubt made it extremely difficult for me to make meaningful friends for quite a while and I was too embarrassed and jealous of those around me to really confide in anyone or let myself get close to anyone. I spend the majority of my first semester hiding in the stairwells to study and avoid people. I even took to sleeping under a table in the dorm study room to be away from my roommates.

From hundreds of miles away my dad tried to control my relationship with my boyfriend and I foolishly let him.  He would talk with my boyfriend for hours on end about intensely personal things about which no one has a right to ask anyone but perhaps their closest friend. My boyfriend would come away emotionally drained and exhausted, telling me he didn’t think he could endure any more. Our relationship wasn’t worth these cross examinations and detailed regulations from thousands of miles away, he said. Though I hated it, I never thought to question my assumption that courtship was how every godly relationship was supposed to happen, and hearing him say he wanted to give up tore my heart apart. What little confidence I had plummeted. I’d lived twenty-one years learning to shut down emotionally when my dad started talking and this man I loved couldn’t seem to endure it for event a few months. If I could deal with it for a lifetime without gaining anything, why couldn’t he pull through a few months to get me? I felt trapped and worthless.

What I had thought was a vibrant relationship with God deteriorated to nothing as everything came crashing down around me and my dream college became a nightmare. I hardly slept and I felt so depressed I cried every morning when my alarm went off. I got sick almost immediately after moving to campus and remained sick for three months. First a normal cold, then bronchitis, then the flu, then strep throat — but I think I only missed four or five classes total. Unless I was completely knocked out sick, I would still struggle to class and chapel, and then huddle with my blankets and soup until the early morning trying to keep on top of all my classes.

I made few friends my first year because I’d trained myself to keep people at arms length, and the friends I did make seemed incessantly needy. I was drained from dealing with my struggling relationship, the nearly constant venting and advice-giving my friends seemed to want, my work and school schedule, my health, and my lack of sleep. I felt invisible, angry, confused, alone, and by the end of my first year I was completely disillusioned with PHC. I’d expected a place of release, freedom, encouragement, and happiness, but instead I’d only found depression and intense insecurity.

The summer between my junior and senior year was both heaven and hell for me. Heaven, because I stayed in Virginia to work and lived with one of the few close friends I’d made, and hell because my boyfriend and I broke up. We got back together less than a week later, but the breakup deeply affected both of us. In a way though the breakup was a turning point for me. It was the lowest point of my existence, and from there I was able to build.

When we got back together I finally realized that the way my parents had been handling my relationship with my boyfriend was abusive, inappropriate, and damaging. While the breakup had been partly my fault, it had also been theirs because I’d allowed them a level of control in my life that was horribly harmful and they’d ran with it. And so for the first time in my life I stood up for myself. I told my parents that my boyfriend was my future and that our relationship deserved respect. I told them that I would make my own decisions for myself as an autonomous human being – and then I ended the conversation.

I cried and shook like a frightened puppy after that conversation. At twenty-two, a senior in college, I was terrified that somehow God would send fire from heaven to strike me dead for my “defiance.” But nothing happened.

My senior year I moved off campus into an apartment with my best friend, worked part time, held down an internship in DC, went to class part time, and finally began to enjoy my life. My boyfriend and I rebuilt our relationship, I consciously let people into my life and took others out, reached out for help when I needed it, established boundaries in my relationship with my parents, and began attending church regularly again. I timidly told my story when my friends returned for the fall semester and I heard nothing but encouragement, congratulations, and support. Where I’d expected smirks or confused back-pats of pity, I instead found nods of agreement and understanding. I suddenly realized all that I had in common with those around me. Many of us were stumbling through the first stages of independence, struggling against being suffocated by controlling parents, and reeling from the revelation that God was not who we’d been taught he was.

I was still very unsure of myself at times, but I began to learn things I’d never known before. Respect is a two way street, relationships must have boundaries, disagreement isn’t dishonoring, and respect doesn’t mean obedience. For the first time in my life I also realized that my relationship with my boyfriend was exclusively our responsibility. My parents had no right to try to control it, and I was hurting myself by letting them have that power. It’s still hard at times — almost paralyzing — to look at myself and see that I am learning these things so late in life.Sometimes I wonder if I’ve been forever screwed over.

When my class began giving senior testimonies I didn’t know what to say. As I looked back over my previous two years all I saw was pain and disillusionment. Really that is an unfair characterization since I did have incredibly bright, happy spots as I would later see, but my life was so tumultuous at the time I couldn’t see any pattern of progress or goodness. I saw the wonderful friends I’d made there — both among the student body and the faculty — but I couldn’t get past the fact that my life had fallen apart while I was there and I felt like I was left trying to put it back together alone.

Now having put some distance between myself and my time at PHC I can see what was really going on. If you’d asked me what I thought of my time at PHC while I was there I would have most likely said it was all awful and nothing could make me ever willingly repeat it. Now I can see that the destruction PHC brought on my life was a God-send. It’s true, I did fall apart at and because of PHC, but it was the painful falling apart that I needed.

I’m reminded of the section in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader chapter 7 where Eustice loses his dragon skin. He peeled off layers himself and thought he was free each time, but until he was deeply torn by something else — someone else — he was not truly free. My dragon skin was the buildup of twenty one years of legalistic religion that completely obscured God’s true nature, and PHC was my Aslan — painfully and agonizingly tearing away what I’d been confined in to reveal who I was truly made to be.

I will be the first to say that PHC isn’t for everyone. There are people who have gone there and had terrible experiences and I don’t pretend those don’t exist. I’ve seen students be cruel, heartless, inconsiderate, and downright wrong in their treatment of people, and I don’t want anyone to misunderstand me and think that I’m saying anyone who comes away with a bad taste in their mouth after coming to PHC is lying. I’ve known people who got incredibly annoyed with the level of immaturity displayed by some of the students there, and I’ve seen it too — I won’t deny it. Sadly I was probably that cruel, heartless, inconsiderate, immature, downright wrong student at times. It took two years at PHC to change me.

What I will deny is that PHC is furthering the abuse that has taken place within certain extremely conservative homeschooling circles. You see, it was at PHC that I was first treated as an equal. I was respected at PHC. I was there that I was told that I could be whatever I sent my mind to. At PHC I learned to have a voice for myself, and together with some of my closest friends we took those first baby steps towards understanding who we were and that we deserved respect and should have the final say in our own decisions. It was first at PHC where my mind was more important than my gender. This is my experience.

I can’t finish here without bring up PHC and patriarchy (I hate even typing that word). PHC is associated with patriarchy, I won’t deny it. But the association is a good one, not a bad one (let me explain before you fry me – I hate patriarchy. It is an evil, cruel, disgusting manglement of Christianity that disgusts me). PHC is associated with patriarchy because it is one of the only colleges that the broken children of patriarchy are allowed to go.

When I came to PHC, the dust of patriarchy clung to my clothes, despite the fact that I thought I’d already shaken it off. It was PHC that helped me truly clean the scum of patriarchy and legalism from my life. It was my professors and my classmates that made that long hard journey with me. PHC’s proximity to those caught up in the patriarchy movement give it the ability to understand and meet the needs of those who come from that background. Had I gone off to a different school that wasn’t so close to the homeschooling community there would have been no one to understand my background and sympathetically help me along my journey out of that type of upbringing.

PHC played a very important role for me and for many of my friends as well. It looks conservative enough on paper that controlling homeschool parents will “allow” their children to attend there when they wouldn’t ever dream of letting them go to any other college (that was my experience — PHC was hard enough, I know my parents would never have let me go anywhere else, and I wasn’t in a place in my life to do something without my parents’ “blessing”). Once at PHC, those students who come from that type of background are able to unlearn everything wrong they’ve been taught and re-learn who God really is and what Christianity means in a setting of mostly sympathetic, understanding fellow students and professors.

PHC is a safe place for these homeschoolers to venture out of their background in a world of otherwise understandably confused people who wouldn’t know how to help. The skirt-wearing courtship-enduring freshman me wouldn’t have survived very long anywhere but at PHC.

As imperfect as PHC can be, in my mind it will always be the “halfway house” between my upbringing and where I am today. It was painful and agonizing, but ultimately the best thing that ever happened in my life and I thank God every day for the destruction I underwent at PHC. It saved me and I would be a mess if I hadn’t have gone. It is for this reason that I want PHC to continue on strong: so it can continue to save the broken children of homeschooling.

Now you’ll have to excuse me because I have a date with my fiance.

The Reluctant Rebel: Gemma’s Story, Part Three

HA Editorial Team4 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 Two

Part Three: Sophomore Year

I had apparently made enough “progress” by the following fall semester, my sophomore year, that I was allowed to return to a wing with my friends and my old RA. However, it wasn’t long before I came to the definitive conclusion that Dean Wilson was an evil man by watching how he “counseled” one of my roommates who was dealing with a serious personal issue. He engaged in some of the most blatant, disgusting, misogynistic victim-blaming I have ever heard come out of a man’s mouth, and left my roommate even more grief-stricken and overwhelmed than she had been before.

Somehow it was easier to see the evil clearly when it was being inflicted on someone else.

That year, my RA and another popular student wrote a petition to the administration for the loosening of some of the more restrictive rules, especially regarding the interaction of male and female students. This petition was actually relatively successful, and in the aftermath it seemed like people could breathe again. I remember going to an off-campus basketball game shortly after this and seeing girls and guys in the bleachers, rubbing shoulders and leaning back against each other’s knees—just like normal college kids would do. It made me happy—my friends and I acted like this in high school. It seemed normal and familiar.

I also remember, in the time between the delivery of the petition and the administration’s positive response, my RA hiding—literally hiding—in her dorm room, ducking from the view of the window, or sitting in the hallway trying to breathe and slow her rapid heart beat. She had done the right thing, but she was terrified of Dean Wilson, and of the nameless atmosphere of fear we were all drowning in. She laughed at the absurdity of her “hiding,” but the feeling was real and we all knew it.

Academically, the school was living up to its reputation. In fact, I think one of the reasons the student life issues were so important to everyone is that we had so little chance to socialize as it was. Most of our time was spent studying, trying to conquer the unconquerable mountain of work we were assigned. My classes were extremely difficult, but very rewarding. Most of the professors seemed genuinely to enjoy their students. Some would routinely hold court in the dining hall between and after classes, answering questions, doling out advice, mostly just joking around or facilitating lighthearted debates.

But there was a growing split between the administration and the Office of Student Life, on the one hand, and the academic side of the school, on the other. We started to articulate it even then to outsiders who asked: the education here is great, but the culture is oppressive. Dean Wilson took it personally that the professors—and let’s face it, many of the students—were smarter than he was. He and his favored students started ruminating on the pride of intellectualism, the vanity of worldly philosophy, and the greater goodness of purity of heart and devotion to Scripture. It was spoken of as an either/or dilemma—smart, prideful, sinful people vs. lowly, humble, pure people.

It was around this time that several friends and I had started a campus group called the Alexis de Tocqueville Society. We semi-regularly published a journal of academic writing, book, music, and movie reviews, and opinion pieces. We also hosted guest lecturers on a variety of topics, from international relations to medieval literature to film criticism. Our stated mission was to further intellectual dialogue on campus. It was definitely an intellectually-focused club, but our mission was to serve the campus as a whole, not to show off. But ATS attracted the “wrong” kind of students, and it wasn’t long before “ATS” became a byword for “troublemakers.” We embodied that “intellectual elitism” Dean Wilson hated so much, and the administration began to view us with suspicion.

I now recognize this anti-intellectualism and many other of Dean Wilson’s teachings in what has been written recently about Bill Gothard and other authoritarian homeschool leaders.

For instance, Dean Wilson repeatedly admonished us not to take up another person’s offense—a teaching so bizarre and idiosyncratic I recognized it immediately when it appeared recently on the Recovering Grace website. Another example is this page from the ATI Basic Seminar textbook. Again, I discovered this only recently, but was shocked to see how neatly it summed up so much of what the students branded as “rebels” endured from our fellow students and from Student Life and the administration:

Basic Seminar Page

I know these teachings seem commonplace to those who grew up in systems like these. You have to imagine how bewildering and alienating these judgmental attitudes seemed to those of us who literally had no context to understand how we were being perceived, or why. I didn’t go into college wanting to be a rebel. I was a good, homeschooled, Christian girl. I memorized Scripture by the chapter, volunteered at AWANA, and played praise songs on the piano. I’d never even had a boyfriend before college. But at PHC, just by living my (good) life and being myself, I was branded a “rebel.” It was like there was this invisible line I was constantly crossing, which everyone could see except me. The only people who made sense to me were the other “rebels.” After a while, it just got psychologically demoralizing. I don’t even know what you people want from me, so fine, I’m a “rebel.”

Dean Wilson was a strong adherent of Doug Wilson and the Pearls. In our weekly small-group wing chapels, we were given writings from Wilson and the Pearls to study and discuss.

Here, for example, is the actual handout we studied in one wing chapel, probably during the 2003-2004 school year. The name and book title are mysteriously missing, but anyone familiar with the material can recognize it as a page straight out of Debi Pearl’s Created To Be His Help Meet.

ctbhhm

From what I’ve heard, the men were indoctrinated with these materials even more than the women. It wasn’t like everyone on campus necessarily accepted these things at face value—in my wing of relatively fashion-forward women, I remember us all kind of giggling at one piece of Doug Wilson’s that condemned high heels. But even if everyone didn’t accept them, the presence of these writings and teachings added to the overall atmosphere. Now, it entered the minds of everyone that girls who wore high heels were sluttier than girls who didn’t. Now, wearing heels meant something it hadn’t meant before.

Mike Farris has recently distanced himself from people like Gothard, Phillips, Wilson, and other extremists and has claimed that he rejects their teachings. I think it is true that he, personally, does not hold to many of their more extreme beliefs.

But he allowed these extreme views to circulate on his campus with a stamp of official approval.

He allowed his hand-picked Dean of Student Life and this dean’s favorite, very conservative students to dominate the campus culture with their extremism. He should have known this was going on. If he knew, he never said anything.

And Mike Farris had no qualms about saying something when he thought something needed to be said! Once, a student wrote an article for the student newspaper with the Slate-esque headline of “Why Bono Is A Better Christian Than You.” This piece prompted Farris to respond with an entire chapel sermon on why cursing is bad and demonstrates that one is not a true Christian. Afterward, he spoke jovially with the author of the article, slapping him on the back in a “no harm, no foul” kind of way. But not surprisingly, this response had a chilling effect on the further publication of controversial pieces in campus newspapers.

Another time, Farris got wind that some students had been dabbling in libertarianism. This prompted another chapel sermon, a fiery one in which he denounced libertarians as no better than child molesters.

So it’s not like he ever hesitated to address campus trends that bothered him, publicly and personally.

My best guess is that Mike Farris and Paul Wilson personally benefitted from a campus culture of total submission to authority. Many ultra-conservative students came from backgrounds that said parents, pastors, and government must be obeyed without question and respected without complaint. Questions and complaints were no better than defiance, and defiance of authority was an unforgivable sin. It was very easy for these students to add “college administrators” to that list of unquestionable authorities.

Knowing what I know now, I can see where that mindset comes from. At the time, I thought I was surrounded by a bizarre species of human who spoke some kind of foreign code. At least, I never could seem to get through to them with normal English words, or logic, or questions like Where in the Bible does it say it is evil to question a college administrator? And many of them—especially the young men—didn’t even seem capable of looking me in the face when I talked, or acknowledging anything I had to say. I think Farris tacitly (and Wilson explicitly) approved of this state of affairs, because it gave them power and control over the student body.

That, or he just didn’t know that his students were being forced to study patriarchalist writers and imbibe cultic teachings under the guise of not only administrative, but religious authority—but he really, really should have known.

One final example of the split between the academic and student-life cultures on campus came towards the end of my sophomore year. A reporter from the New York Times, David Kirkpatrick, came to visit the campus for a story he was writing. Reporters were on campus all the time. PHC was huge media bait during its first few years in existence, and the administration was only too happy to show us off to the world. At first, it was kind of fun to interact with reporters, but after a while, you just feel like a specimen being examined. I guess it never occurred to the administrators that it’s actually really hard to pay attention in class when there’s a massive camera in your face. The students joked about campus being a “fishbowl,” a double reference to the utter lack of privacy within and the constant prying eyes from without.

At any rate, when David Kirkpatrick arrived, he came to visit my class. I was taking a course called “Modernity, Post-modernity, and Society,” a political theory elective intentionally modeled on a graduate-level, seminar-style course. We were reading and discussing Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition on the day Mr. Kirkpatrick sat in on our class. At the end of the class, he complimented the students and the professor on the level of engagement with text we had displayed. He himself had read The Human Condition—in graduate school—and he noted that we had handled the text as well as any of his graduate classmates had.

I was, of course, pleased with the compliment—but even more pleased that this reporter from the New York Times had seen the good side of PHC, the academic side, before encountering whatever weirdness he was sure to find if he hung around long enough.

And it didn’t take long at all. By the time I got to lunch, he was in the dining hall, surrounded by a table full of girls in long prairie skirts. The article led with a photo of students walking on campus, noting that students “may show affection publicly only by holding hands while walking”—one of the more arcane rules from the rulebook.

There was no mention of Arendt or graduate-style seminar courses.

Part Four >

Depth of Love, Diversity of People: Simeon Tomaszewski’s Story

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

Homeschoolers U

Simeon Tomaszewski is in the Patrick Henry College Class of 2015.

No human institution is perfect; I can attest that Patrick Henry College is no exception to that rule. That said, coming from the conservative, homeschooled, Christian background that I did, the depth of love and diversity of people that I discovered at Patrick Henry College surprised me. My first reaction to some people very different from me was sometimes, “The Admissions let [person X] into the college?!?” But over time, I grew to appreciate them.

Some students, not just on campus as a whole, but in my wing and close circle of friends, listen to classical music, others to rap. Some students spend the bulk of their free time video gaming, others biking, some socializing. And as often as I have tried to shove people into boxes, they manage to surprise me. The guy who spends hours playing video games is a deep philosophical thinker. The girl who seems to have no end of time to spend encouraging others actually does very well academically, too. The jock is studying Music and learning to conduct an orchestra. College faculty and staff are the same way.

I have been very blessed by my time at PHC and grown in many ways. Not least among these is a broadening of the mind, a newfound hesitance to dismiss out of hand ideas with which I disagree or even people who don’t “fit” in my social sphere.

I cannot speak for other students, but my PHC experience has been nearly unqualifiedly a good one.