sexual assault

Teaching Abstinence Without Teaching Consent is Dangerous

HA Editorial Team5 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Shaney Irene’s blog. It was originally published on October 9, 2015.

Today, Christian magazine WORLD News published an article about California requiring schools to teach consent in sex education classes. Although not stated explicitly, it’s pretty clear the author, Laura Edghill, is not too happy about this. Only one of the four quotes given in the article is positive, and more time is spent discussing the supposed downsides of the bill, rather than talking about why consent is an important topic to teach. It also demonstrates that WORLD has no idea what teaching consent actually means.

“But advocates for abstinence education say that while preparing students to protect themselves from sexual assault is important, the “affirmative consent” conversation is based on the flawed assumption that the best we can do for students is teach them risk reduction, rather than risk avoidance.”

WORLD has long been a proponent of abstinence-based sex education, so it’s safe to assume that their readers are going to agree with what the abstinence educators say.

But here’s the thing: Teaching consent is not about “risk reduction” vs. “risk avoidance.” Teaching abstinence without teaching consent actually puts kids MORE at risk for sexual assault. Teaching kids to only have sexual contact within marriage won’t stop predators from attempting sexual assault. But teaching kids consent will enable them to recognize what they’re experiencing as sexual assault or not.

I know too many women who grew up in conservative Christian environments who experienced sexual assault, but did not recognize it as such at the time. Why? Because they were never taught that once they said no, the other person was committing a crime. They were never taught that only yes means yes. So they carried guilt for years, assuming they were complicit in sexual sin (“I must have tempted him in some way,” or, “I must not have protested hard enough,”) until they came across the concept of consent and realized they had been assaulted.

“Sex is like boxing. If both people haven’t consented, one of them is committing a crime.”–John Oliver

The rich part of this is that WORLD has reported extensively on the issue of sexual abuse. But in reporting to their readers that teaching consent is “risk reduction” while teaching abstinence is “risk avoidance,” they’re giving parents false information and exposing children to even more risk of sexual abuse. Not one instance of sexual abuse has been prevented by telling people to only have sex inside of marriage.

Assuming abstinence-based sex education will prevent sexual abuse is as ludicrous as assuming saying, “Don’t drive while under the influence of alcohol,” will prevent someone from getting hit by a drunk driver.

And this is a HUGE problem within the church, as this article from Christianity Today’s Leadership Journal describes. The church today does not understand consent. It assumes that teaching that sexual contact outside of marriage is enough, but it’s not. We must teach our kids that their bodies belong to them, and no one else can touch them without their okay. Without teaching consent, abuse will continue to run rampant.

So WORLD magazine, you are part of the problem. If you want to prevent more sexual abuse within the church, you need to stop acting as if teaching consent is a bad thing. You can start by giving away copies of God Made All of Me, a book written to teach consent to young children, to your readers.

Hurts Me More Than You: Sabina’s Story

HA Editorial Team4 Comments

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*****

Trigger warning for Hurts Me More Than You series: posts in this series may include detailed descriptions of corporal punishment and physical abuse and violence towards children.

Additional trigger warning for Sabina’s story: brief description of sexual assault.

*****

Sabina’s Story

I remember the spanking I was proud of: the spanking when I closed the door on my emotions and became a blank page. I was probably 7 or 8, and two or three strokes in, bent over my parents’ bed, when my rigid body finally went limp.

Afterwards I was so proud of myself, and never again did I cry during a spanking.

For years I had been trying to “receive my discipline correctly”. I had a chart, and every time I received my discipline (didn’t scream angrily, didn’t cower or cover my bottom, didn’t lash out before, during or after) I would get a sticker and my mom would be proud of me. After I filled the chart, I got to get a pet of my very own. If I didn’t receive my discipline correctly, it was ok, my mom was good enough to give me another chance to receive my discipline right then, with another spanking. Another 10-15 swats with the paddle my dad made in the garage and sanded down smooth so it wouldn’t cause any damage, perfectly flat so that it wouldn’t hit unevenly. Made with love, not even as thick as a wooden stirring spoon, it had a hole at the top to hang it next to the phone in the kitchen.

I say this with no malice. My parents love me and I love them.

They wanted me to receive my loving discipline correctly as training for when I would need to accept the loving discipline of the Lord as an adult. They would get angry when we sinned, but they never made us receive discipline when they were angry. We would get sent to their room, to wait until they calmed down enough to do what the Lord required them to do.

Today I’m almost 27. You know how when people are angry, they say they see red? If you were to hit me right now, I know I’d see white.

I remember that white being peaceful, like I was finally not responsive to the impulses of my sinful brain that so often used to make me instinctively cover my butt.

I stopped getting spankings when I was 11 or 12, I believe. But that white numbness came again when I was 19.

A kid my age trapped me in a room and sexually assaulted me after I told him I was a virgin. I couldn’t push him off me, I wouldn’t defend myself, because something told me it would be over soon and I probably deserved it for talking with a boy about sex. Just like my spankings, I wanted everything to be over as soon as possible, so I could receive forgiveness and be able to forget about it.

So I did.

I shoved the experience away and didn’t talk about it for years, until I heard the term “sexual assault” in a sociology class and the memories came rushing back.

When I told my mom about the assault, she cried and asked why I hadn’t told her. I didn’t have an answer then, but now I know:

When you receive your discipline, you are supposed to be quiet, teachable. And the slate will be clean and your sins will trouble you no more.

The Legend of the Bitter Alum: Hope’s Story, Part Three

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

Homeschoolers U

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Hope” is a pseudonym specifically chosen by the author. All other names herein have been changed as well.

< Part Two

Part Three

“Moving on,” in my case, meant a complete restructuring of my world at PHC. I changed rooms and churches, stopped hanging out with other students from Distance Learning, and started asking a lot of questions about the Tragic Meltdown.

It was still fresh in the minds of the students, which meant that some of them wouldn’t shut up, some of them wouldn’t open up, and some of them were okay with talking so long as it was in private. Everyone responds to grief differently.

From the ones who would talk privately, I learned a great deal.

I learned that the quickest way to annoy any student was to suggest that someone “won” the fight – everyone was eager to assure me that there were no winners. “Everyone got hurt,” the students said emphatically. It was the most common refrain. Even Dr. Farris had not gone unscathed. People didn’t easily forgive him for airing his disagreements with the professors at the student’s graduation. “That day was about the graduates! Many of them were close with those professors! Why should they have had to hear their mentors abused in public on what should have been their day of celebration?”

I learned also that the fight had been building for years, but mitigated through the efforts of the former Dean of Academic Affairs, who was able to keep the peace. It was only when the dean had enough and left the school that the whole Meltdown happened – which made me suspect that he’d probably left to avoid burn out.

I also learned that no one really could explain why it happened. I heard a lot of theories. Dr. Farris’ temper figured prominently in most versions. Others might reference a flaw of this professor or that. One of the professors was prickly about his honor, couldn’t shrug off an insult. Another professor was egging things on, demanded that the students in his class take sides – the one girl who’d walked out told me she’d done so because she figured if she had to take a side, she’d prefer to at least pick which side it was.

I asked about the writings, said that they didn’t look like they were in conflict, and was told that it was a fight more of personalities, than doctrines. As I said, however, these were the things I learned from those who would only talk in private.

Of the ones who wouldn’t shut up, there were three students in particular that I soon learned I didn’t like. They were very angry and condescending in public. Any ASE or article written by them was sure to offend. The college announced it had received accreditation, the threesome looked sour. They frequently argued that people should get out now while they had a chance, which was especially insulting to the freshmen and Distance Learners, none of whom appreciated being treated like brainless infants.

The newcomers, far from helpless, lashed back indiscriminately with their own equally insulting conviction that the seniors were mighty poor losers who should just drop the subject.

It was as if someone planned a birthday party and a wake in the same location at the same time and didn’t bother to warn the guests.

So there’s people with party hats and noise makers wandering around, bumping into black-armbanded mourners with tissue boxes. And both groups are convinced it was the other group who read the invite wrong.

I got into an email exchange with one of the three when she sent out an All Student Email that I thought was unnecessarily antagonistic. I asked why she was even on campus if she was so determined to be displeased by everything. She told me she was trapped, her credits wouldn’t transfer, and so she had to stay if she wanted her degree. She only had to tough it out one more year.

That, I completely understood.

Still, the year of the toxic party-wake created the unshakable image of the “bitter alum.” These few students, with their alumni counterparts, had long since given up any hope of fixing things. They weren’t talking out of a desire for reform. They were there only because they were trapped, and so they only communicated anger and despair.

In time, of course, those voices fell silent as they found areas in which they were accepted and welcomed and encouraged to invest.

But other voices arose, belonging to people who were angry but not in despair, and they were not heard.

The Administration went through a complete turn-over after the Tragic Meltdown. So did the student body.

The Legend of the Bitter Alum was known, but not the context, not the motives, and not the identity.

As the legend was neither forgiven nor forgotten, there were many who were eager to hunt the Bitter Alum and only the people who had been there could know that the Alum of Legend had moved to greener pastures.

The Board had been too far removed from the action, those in the Administration who could be expected to know were removed from power, and the Student Body and most of the alumni were just too young.

When the New Republic Article came out, the Alumni President went to the Board and told them they had better listen this time. He warned them that the voices behind the article were not the same voices they had assumed. This time, there had better be reform, because the costs of doing otherwise were far too great.

For the most part, there’s been progress. The school did create an Independent Review Board, they encouraged discussion of the IRB’s findings, and they seem willing to support the suggestions. We’re still waiting to see how far they are willing to go, but all gains are incremental.

In the meantime, just gotta keep talking. Increment by increment, I’m confident we’ll get there if we’re just persistent enough.

End of series.

The Legend of the Bitter Alum: Hope’s Story, Part Two

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

Homeschoolers U

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Hope” is a pseudonym specifically chosen by the author. All other names herein have been changed as well.

< Part One

Part Two

I can still remember his glare, the way his lips clenched and eyes narrowed, and then he took his red pen and scrawled his judgment across my paper. The look and the words combined to tell me all I would ever need to know about myself. That I was a failure. That I would never measure up. That my best efforts were utterly worthless.

It was December of 2006, the last week of class before finals, and twenty-four hours before, my roommates, Alice and Amy, had come back from a meeting with the dean of student life as two utterly broken girls.

A few weeks earlier, over Thanksgiving break, Alice had been sexually assaulted by Ryan, a man I had once considered a close friend. She didn’t have to say much for me to know she was telling the truth and I didn’t press for details. I didn’t want to know and I thought it would be insensitive to make her tell.

When she told me what happened, I tried to be supportive. I told her that he’d pay for it – I was fully convinced he would be expelled from the school. I told her I believed her, didn’t blame her, and that Ryan had always been weak in that area.

After all, who’d know that better than me? Sign after sign I’d seen all that semester . . . he wasn’t a gentleman, wasn’t pure in thought. He was a stalker, who lived to see the prey’s fear. How many times had I seen him sneak up on a friend, just to terrify them? Not startle – terrify. He had cruel eyes and he licked his lips.

I even felt a sense of relief when she told me, because finally things were out in the open. The problem had finally been defined.

All three of us skipped Biology lab that morning, to let the news sink in and to avoid taking class with him. Alice and Amy decided to take a nap, as they’d been up late talking. Once they were asleep, I left the room, walked down to the basement door of Red Hill, and waited for Ryan to arrive.

I didn’t have to wait long. Lab was just ending and he soon came out. He smiled, but I didn’t wait for his greeting.

“I know what you did,” I told him, loudly but with finality. “Alice told me. You were very wrong, and you will pay for it. People will find out about it. A lot of people are going to find out.” He tried to defend himself, but I didn’t listen. I’d said what I needed to say, so I turned and left.

I expected that to be very nearly the last word on the subject, or at least the last word that I would ever need to make on the subject. Things didn’t turn out that way. Alice and Amy did come back from the first meeting with the dean hopeful, reporting that she – the dean – had been very upset by what she’d heard and that she’d promised (if it was true) to expel him.

Well, the catch was in the qualifier, I guess, although I’ve never really been sure. My interactions with the dean were almost all indirect and the ones that I did have was so cold, so professional, and so distant, that I can’t begin to speculate on her motives.

In any case, things began to go all wrong shortly thereafter. Ryan was angry. Very angry. What’s the phrase, “high dudgeon?” That was it . . . the absolute, iron-clad, self-righteous assurance that what he had done was perfectly right, or if not perfectly right, that at least it was something that no one had any right to challenge him on.

It might not have been so bad, except that I was expecting things to be quick and simple. Oh, probably not court conviction, it’s not like we had any proof that the police could take to trial, but obviously this was going to be public. Obviously he was going to be disgraced. Obviously he would go away and leave us alone. I mean, seriously, this was sexual assault we’re talking about. People get expelled for that.

But it didn’t happen.

Lunch happened, he was there. Night fell, he was on the sidewalks or in the bushes. I remember coming around the building once and jumping out of my skin to see him so close. Heart in my mouth and breathing heavily, I caught up to some other walkers as quick as I could.

He did jump Alice once. Didn’t do anything, just scared her. I was furious.

The college asked us to keep quiet while the investigation was ongoing. I could understand that. Don’t want to crucify a person before you know he’s guilty . . . this silence did align with my own convictions against gossip. But the longer the thing went on, the more I realized this silence was isolating me. I had only my roommates and my all-too-distant mother for support.

Both of my roommates left campus that weekend, leaving me alone with this madman. I didn’t expect, when I said good bye to them, that it was going to be much of a problem, but I had severely underestimated how much Ryan scared me. The moment night fell, I began to remember so much that had not meant anything to me before . . .

. . . that blow to the face he’d given me in a pillow fight, so hard that my glasses were driven deep into my nose and I’d blacked out for a split second . . .

. . . him telling me about how he’d climbed D2 to plaster nightmarish posters over the girls’ second story windows to “celebrate” Halloween, and how disappointed he was that the security guards had removed them so soon . . .

. . . all our trash talk about martial arts and how he could take me in a fight, which somehow didn’t feel much like trash talk now . . .

. . . each time I’d tried to pull back and he’d ignored my hints and every time I’d given way because I didn’t want to be a prude . . .

Once upon a time, I’d been excited to think that he was a little bit dangerous. Now? Now, it was night, I didn’t have a roommate with me, and he was angry. If he wanted to retaliate, I was the only available target. And he knew I was alone. And he could climb. And he could beat me. And he never did take ‘no’ from me, not even on little things.

I was horribly terrified and far more alone than I’d ever been in my life.

I slept in the RD’s room that weekend, but that was only at night. The RD and my own RA were both incredibly busy people. I felt guilty for taking up their time, and wanted to talk to Amelia, the RA I had adopted as my own. Stupid me, I asked permission first.

It was denied.

For most of the semester, I had been in the habit of walking up to Founder’s several times a night just “to get a drink of water” and also to scope out the events – always did hate to miss a party. I didn’t dare do that alone now, but I also was fully convinced that it was not right to spill the details. I asked a friend to accompany me “because there is someone on campus that I’m scared of.”

Word made it back to the dean, who sent me an order through the RA to shut up. “Don’t be scaring people,” they said. “It isn’t true anyway. Don’t be seeking attention.” I shut up.

Then came the day when we realized none of this was ever going to go away. The day we realized they weren’t going to expel Ryan. Twenty-four hours of hopeless uncertainty, then the meeting where they’d make it official.

And that was the night my paper was due.

Actually, I had two papers due. One was an Economics paper that I had planned to write on the financial considerations of making vs. buying a dress for the Liberty Ball. Ryan, my roommates, two other guys, and I had planned that we would all go together dressed in LOTR costumes – I was going to be Rosie. I didn’t have time to change topics.

Each word I wrote was sheer agony, a blow to an open wound, and I couldn’t allow myself to cry. I had to finish that bloody paper, so I could do the next one.

I could have done them on the weekend before, yes, but I had never had problems writing in high school. Writing was, for me, a pleasure and a privilege, always accompanied by high praise from my teachers and often in front of the class. I could write easily and in minutes what others never could even if they’d struggled for days. I wanted it to stay a pleasure. I wanted to write without the burden of uncertainty and fear on my shoulders.

And now things were nightmaric. All I wanted to do was cry and try to sleep. Instead, I wrote about dreams that could never happen as I worked the night into oblivion.

The first paper finished barely on time. The second was harder, as I had no ready-made plan for it. I had no mental power left to spare, but I came up with a topic. Somehow. I found quotes . . . somehow. I wrote . . . somehow.

And then I walked into the end of class, with my paper hot from the printing. I smiled at the professor, proud to have accomplished something despite the madness of my world. I had done it. No sleep, no tears, no heart left to call my own . . . but at least I could still write. He glared back and, taking his pen, scrawled those four unforgettable red words across my clean white sheet.

Late. End of Class.

My smile vanished, but I didn’t cry. I nodded polite acceptance of his judgment, and left without a word.

And that was my first semester.

For me, it meant a major restructuring of my world. I went home for Christmas feeling like a total failure and scared to death of the dark. Each night of Christmas break, I turned off the lights and just lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, letting the fear wash over me as the tension built and built. Then, I’d reach up, hit the closet light switch, and roll over to go to sleep. Then came the joyful day when I realized I could see enough by the green light of the digital alarm clock that I didn’t have to turn on the closet light. The worst of the fear had finally been broken.

Everyone at home knew something had gone wrong, but not what it was. I told my parents, but acted distant and quiet around anyone else. People told me they were praying for me.

For my own part, I spent my days thinking things through. Did I really want to go back to PHC? I had two years and all my savings sunk into that college and it’s not like I could expect all of my credits to transfer. If I went back to school somewhere else, I would be starting all over again. But maybe that would be worthwhile, just to get away from Ryan.

There are bad apples at every school, I thought. At least at PHC I know who it is. Not, perhaps, the most cheering sort of progress one could make, but still progress of a kind.

If I leave PHC, where will I go? It had taken me two years to scrape together enough hope and will power to apply to PHC. I had no guarantee the next time would be quicker and plenty of reason to believe that it wouldn’t. I have always hated giving up and I believed that the shock of quitting would probably kill me. I felt like a failure right now; but if I got that diploma, wouldn’t I be proving that I wasn’t a failure at all?

It never occurred to me to wonder if other administrations did things differently than PHC’s had. I guess I just assumed that was industry standard. Not the best assumption perhaps, but it did give me a way to distance myself from the event.

It happened, it was done, I’ll move on.

Part Three >

How Not to Address Marriage or Child Abuse

HA Editorial Team8 Comments

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on September 3, 2014.

I recently came upon an image posted on Facebook by homeschool mom, speaker, and writer Heidi St. John.

I’m not sure what’s more disturbing—this image, or that none of the moms commenting on it saw this image as disturbing.

Rape-Culture-FB

The image is photoshopped from an old comic that depicts an employee sexually assaulting his “frigid” boss (see here and here or view the full comic here). Sure, one could try to argue that the image has been removed from that context, what with the new words in the bubbles and all, but that fails given the tear on the woman’s cheek and the fact that she is clearly trying to fight the man off (notice her pounding fists). Whatever the words, the image clearly depicts a woman futilely trying to fight off a stronger man’s advances. In fact, in the context St. John provides the image, it appears to be depicting attempted marital rape.

Heidi St. John runs The Busy Mom blog and holds retreats for homeschooling moms. She and her husband run several ministries, including Firmly Planted Family and Firmly Planted Co-ops, which has member co-ops across the country and offers a workbook on how to make sure your homeschool co-op is “firmly planted”. St. John is also the author of The Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide to Romance, among other books. The author’s blurb is as follows:

busymomHomeschooling offers parents the best opportunity to shepherd their children both academically and spiritually. Yes. It’s worth it. But do you ever feel as if your life is all homeschool all the time? Do you ever wonder where the girl your husband married went? This book is for every mom who has collapsed into bed at the end of the day, looked into the eyes of her husband and promised tomorrow, she’d have time for him. Trouble is, tomorrow finds her more exhausted than the day before. If you have ever felt caught between the demands of homeschooling your children and meeting the needs of your husband, you’re not alone. Read and discover how even a busy homeschool mom can make time to nurture her marriage. It s not as hard as you think and more important than you may realize. Pre-order your copy today!

I am sure St. John has some genuinely good advice. The Amazon reviews of her book (which I have not read) speak of chapters on things like household organization and “me time.”

My concern with St. John centers on two things: first, her use of the comic book image makes me concerned about what she teaches regarding sex and consent, and second, her treatment of HA and HARO on her facebook wall makes me concerned about how her homeschool co-op ministry addresses (or does not address) things like abuse or neglect.

First, the comic book image.

The trouble is that an image like this, in the Christian homeschooling community St. John is very much a part of, arrives in a context already influenced by writers like Debi Pearl and the teachings of Bill Gothard and others. These leaders explicitly teach that a wife should never say “no” to her husband’s sexual advances. These leaders do not recognize the existence of marital rape, because they see sex within marriage as the husband’s right.

Coming in this cultural context, St. John’s image is not “funny.” It’s a problem.

It normalizes coercion and marital rape.

Second, St. John’s treatment of HARO and HA.

Last week St. John posted a defense of HSLDA on her facebook wall, and several homeschool alumni who had mutual friends with her left comments sharing their stories and trying to explain their concerns with an organization that defends child abusers and elevates parental rights while denying that children have rights. St. John’s responds was this:

HARO-and-HA

St. John’s response to abuse in the homeschooling environment is “we’ve got bigger problems in this world right now” and “move on.” She calls homeschool-alumni-turned-reformers “a bunch of angry kids trying to get back at their parents.”

This should not be acceptable.

I’d like to see St. John reach out to member co-ops with information on recognizing and reporting abuse and neglect, perhaps using resources developed by HARO or CRHE, but her response here suggests that she doesn’t see this as a priority. Instead, she’d rather stick with praising HSLDA and condemning homeschool alumni who point out that HSLDA’s policies protect abusers (which they do). My concerns here are much, much bigger than Phillips and Gothard. Those two leaders have gone down in scandal, but they were never the center of my concerns. The valuing of belief over people, the glossing over things like consent, the minimizing of the need to protect children—these are things that concern me.

And St. John reminds us, once again, that these things haven’t disappeared with Phillips and Gothard.

The Day We Fall Silent is The Day We Don’t Care Anymore: Nikki’s Story, Part Three

HA Editorial Team5 Comments

Homeschoolers U

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

< Part Two

Part Three

After freshman year, I got pretty distracted. I started dating my husband.

He headed off to bootcamp shortly after we got together and wouldn’t live near me again for the next two years. I took up 18 credit hour semesters, a waitressing job, moot court, and mock trial. My biggest problems stemmed from my parents, who did everything possible—including blackmail and false imprisonment—to try and put my freed mind back under their control. Why? I had told them that I and I alone would choose who I would marry.

Despite the debacle that was my family situation, I wasn’t one of the “problem” kids. I never once got called in to Student Life for the “talk” so many of my peers received. Neither RD paid any attention to me, as far as I could tell. My RA chided me once, during my entire time at PHC, to tell me that I couldn’t come back at 6 in the morning during one of my (now) husband’s rare visits. (Yes, I ignored her.) I was never dress-coded (a fact that I now realize is remarkable). I didn’t go out drinking, go to clubs in DC, or hang out with those who did.

I was, all in all, an extremely boring person.

But I stilled witnessed controversy after controversy, saw first-hand PHC’s sexist culture, and sat under professors who pushed a right-wing agenda rather than the elite academics I had been promised. I’ll describe some of these events here.

One of my best friends was sexually assaulted freshman year. Her story, and how Dean Corbitt blamed her for the assault, was covered by Kiera Feldman in the New Republic this past spring. Current students like to claim the New Republic article is a hit piece. I lived through those events. I remember the perpetrator stalking my friend in the weeks after the attack, while the administration took no action to protect her and threatened her with expulsion for reaching out to the other students for help.

Freshman year Michael Farris, the school’s founder and chancellor, started a group called Tyndale’s Ploughmen. It was explicitly labeled “leadership training” for would-be politicians. Participants got to meet political leaders of the Religious Right in order to receive instruction and advice from them. I applied.

At my interview, Farris asked if my parents would be okay with me having a career, explaining that he would not want me to participate in anything my parents would find unsuitable for a girl.

I was too young and naïve to realize how inappropriate that question was, as if a 19-year-old woman’s participation in a school-sponsored program should be limited by her parents’ religious beliefs. A few weeks later, I discovered that I was the only woman among a dozen or more men who had made it into the program. We got to meet with individuals like Donald Hodel (Reagan’s Secretary of Energy and a huge supporter of PHC), Steve Largent (former Republican Congressman from Oklahoma who sponsored Farris’s first parental rights bill back in the ‘90s), John Ashcroft (George W. Bush’s Attorney General), and a large Republican donor who fed us on gold-rimmed plates and showed off his collection of Confederate relics.

It’s hard to put into words what it was like to be the only female student on these trips.

My gender was somehow always a topic of conversation. I couldn’t just be. I was surrounded by male students who I considered my friends but who would not let me forget for a moment that I was different. Even Farris joined in on it, in a way that was both flattering (he was the chancellor of the school) and disconcerting.

I could only hear him tell me that my boyfriend had made a good choice because I was the same height as Mrs. Farris so many times, without starting to feel uncomfortable about it all.

Sophomore year, my roommate was locked in the j-lab with Walker (PHC President), Sillars (journalism professor), and Veith (PHC provost), along with most of the journalism students. For over an hour, Walker interrogated the students, did not allow any of them to leave, and threatened them all with expulsion. At one point, he even said that he would sue them for slander. Their crime? One journalism student had found this L.A. Times article about Dr. John Warwick Mongtomery, at that point a recently hired theology professor at the school, and shared it with a few friends. The news article described Montgomery as a bigamist and a wife batterer.

My favorite professor, Travis Moger, left under mysterious circumstances not too long after—the fourth professor to leave in a year (and yes, these departures were in addition to those who had left in the Schism of 2006, which others have described; it was a huge turnover for the tiny school, and those four were some of the best teachers remaining at the school). A vocal critic of the administration, Moger had supposedly confronted Walker about this blatant bullying of the journalism students. I recite that statement with a bit of hesitation, however. You see, no one knew for sure why he suddenly left. We were all warned to keep quiet because Walker had threatened to revoke Moger’s severance pay if people “talked.”

We mourned Moger’s leaving by watching Dead Poets Society, a fitting tribute to a professor who had challenged us to question the approved narrative and to seek out our own truth.

Many PHC students, past and current, like to claim that PHC provides a rigorous, liberal arts education. Maybe it once did, before the Schism. But it did not during my time there. There were a few outstanding classes, taught by Moger, King, and Smith, all professors who left a year or two after the Schism amid whispered murmurs about the lack of academic freedom.

But the majority of my coursework was mired by an ever-present fear of “liberal academia.”

Trumpeting the Christian conservative message was key to most of my professors; everything in class had to be tied, in one way or another, to their theme that Christianity was best, liberals are dangerous, and atheists are sinister. I’ll provide one example of how this type of thinking played out in class. Dr. Darrel Cox teaches theology at PHC and has since 2006. I had the displeasure of taking three classes with him: Theology I, Theology II, and Principles of Biblical Reasoning, all of which are mandatory courses. He was a poor lecturer, rarely covering the material in anything resembling a direct fashion and often wasting the entire class time with spurious stories or jokes about why St. Augustine was wrong about sex.

As you can imagine, it’s decidedly uncomfortable, as a freshman living in the midst of a slut-shaming purity culture, to hear a father of 7 discuss the beauties of his sex life in almost every class session.

His classes were also agonizingly simplistic.

I well recall that one question on a midterm required us to draw a picture of an iceberg. Another question required us to remember that he frequently used the term “mouseness” in class. At first, a few of us fought back when he said something particularly outrageous. After awhile, some realized that he was docking their grades. We compared exams when they were returned and realized that some outspoken students had given the same answer as quiet or favored students but hadn’t receive credit for it. If you need good grades to get into grad school, constantly fighting back doesn’t seem worth it anymore. So when, at the end of the semester in Principles of Biblical Reasoning, he assigned John Glubb’s “Fate of Empires,” I don’t remember anyone even protesting. In most classrooms today, Glubb’s work would be presented as an interesting but unfortunate piece describing the xenophobic and sexist beliefs of British colonial thought. Cox presented it as accurate and useful.

The text we were given is available here. To give you an idea of its content, here are a few quotes:

Grubb argues that immigrants destroy empires (from page 15):

Second- or third-generation foreign immigrants may appear outwardly to be entirely assimilated, but they often constitute a weakness in two directions. First, their basic human nature often differs from that of the original imperial stock. If the earlier imperial race was stubborn and slow-moving, the immigrants might come from more emotional races, thereby introducing cracks and schisms into the national policies, even if all were equally loyal.

Second, while the nation is still affluent, all the diverse races may appear equally loyal. But in an acute emergency, the immigrants will often be less willing to sacrifice their lives and their property than will be the original descendants of the founder race.

Grubb claims that giving women rights is a sign of the end of an empire (from page 17):

An increase in the influence of women in public life has often been associated with national decline. The later Romans complained that, although Rome ruled the world, women ruled Rome. In the tenth century, a similar tendency was observable in the Arab Empire, the women demanding admission to the professions hitherto monopolized by men. ‘What,’ wrote the contemporary historian, Ibn Bessam, ‘have the professions of clerk, tax-collector or preacher to do with women? These occupations have always been limited to men alone.’ Many women practiced law, while others obtained posts as university professors. There was an agitation for the appointment of female judges, which, however, does not appear to have succeeded.

Soon after this period, government and public order collapsed, and foreign invaders overran the country. . . .

When I first read these contemporary descriptions of tenth-century Baghdad, I could scarcely believe my eyes. I told myself that this must be a joke! The descriptions might have been taken out of The Times today. The resemblance of all the details was especially breathtaking—the break-up of the empire, the abandonment of sexual morality, the ‘pop’ singers with their guitars, the entry of women into the professions, the five-day work week.

What does anything in this reading have to do with Principles of Biblical Reasoning, the subject of the class? To this day, I don’t entirely know. Whatever it was, Cox’s treatment of the subject was not worthy of the terms “ivy league,” “liberal arts,” or “rigorous.” Students can say what they want about how “hard” their schoolwork is, but PHC doesn’t challenge them by presenting fair and well-argued examples of liberal arguments. PHC doesn’t even let them listen to liberal speakers on campus—the administration has yet to host one, in the school’s 14 years of existence. What PHC does do is allow professors like Cox, who routinely engages in outrageous personal attacks on former students via social media, to wax on about the wonders of John Glubb without a single countervailing voice on the faculty.

A few years after this episode, Eden Troupe (PHC’s student-run theater club) decided to put on The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s celebrated play about the Salem witch trials. A school that prides itself on being “God’s Harvard” should embrace academic freedom; it should certainly encourage its students to perform a classic piece from the canon of American theater. But it seems that PHC’s administration, under the leadership of Graham Walker, cares more about preserving a pristine Christian image than providing a well-rounded liberal arts education.

The administration tried to kill the project.

They called the play a direct attack on the school, and several school officials refused to come see it performed—at a campus where the president, provost, and other administrative officials routinely go to all of Eden Troupe’s performances. In the end, Eden Troupe could not even perform the play on campus. They had to contract with a local public school to use its facilities.

To outsiders, it probably seems strange that The Crucible would elicit this reaction. After all, there is no dispute that the Salem witch trials did happen, and the play is a fictionalized but realistic depiction of those events. There’s also neither nudity nor profanity in the piece.

But the Puritans are idolized at PHC.

Dr. Stephen Baskerville (who you may remember delivered the shocking Faith and Reason last year that denounced domestic violence laws) spent weeks describing their god-fearing, pro-family virtues in his Freedoms Foundations class (which I took in 2007-2008). Dr. Robert Spinney, a favorite history professor at the school, has his US History I students write a book report on Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were by Ryken Leland. Current or recent students who have taken his (mandatory) class say that re-imaging the Puritans is one of Spinney’s “pet projects.” His goal is to make Puritans seem less legalistic—or not legalistic at all. (Redefining legalism is another project of his, as is, for those who are noting the patriarchal assumptions of even the best members of the PHC faculty, advocating for strict modesty standards, as seen here and here). The PHC faculty routinely holds the Puritans up as an example of a community that rightfully obeyed God’s directed order when designing their own polity. Depicting the Puritans in a negative light, as The Crucible rightfully does, contradicts PHC’s own goal to produce Christian leaders who will use Puritan (or Puritan-like) theology and political theory to reform the United States.

That’s why the play, despite being an American classic, is an attack on the school.

I realize this post has been a hodge-podge of many aspects of my time at PHC. So many different events contributed to my disaffection with the school, it’s difficult to synthesize them. A single post, or even a series of posts, can’t begin to describe them all. Still, I’d like to close with a final example from my senior year.

Every year, the student body president gives a speech to the incoming freshmen class. In fall 2009, the student body president included this quote from Tony Campolo in his challenge to the class:

I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 45,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 45,000 kids died last night.

President Walker’s reaction was swift and severe—and, ironically, only proved the aptness of the quote. In an effort to keep a semblance of student control over student government, the student senate brokered a compromise with Walker with the help of a professor. If the student senate passed a resolution calling for the student body president to resign, the student senate could sit on the resignation for 30 days, vote it down, and then Walker would be placated. The student senate then passed the resolution, many senators voting this way only because of the compromise. The student body president then refused to resign.

Walker responded by prohibiting him from exercising his duties as student body president and issued this memo.

Quite the uproar ensued.

In the days that followed, Walker agreed to host a town hall where students could ask him questions about his behavior. I, with many others, attended. I remember asking him, point blank, why Dr. Montgomery (you’ll remember him as the bigamist from the L.A. Times article) could call a student an “inconsiderate wench” in front of his whole class and never have to offer so much as a sorry for it (an incident from sophomore year), but our student body president couldn’t quote a famous preacher. Walker dismissed the comparison. Before the evening was over, he had publicly claimed he had the power to unilaterally remove any student from student government or a campus club, or impose any other penalty listed in the student handbook if, in his belief, the student’s behavior had harmed “the integrity of the college,” a power he also claimed to have in the aforementioned memo.

Looking back, I’m primarily struck by the pettiness of it all.

Here’s a school that claims to be creating the next generation of great Christian leaders, but the administration wastes time and political capital to crack down on the public use of a Tony Campolo quote.

The same administration that ignored a pig’s head on a stake outside my dorm window freshman year thinks that publicly saying “shit” is a danger to the integrity of the school.

Is it any surprise that so many alumni hold Walker and those who support him in so little esteem? Walker and company are so busy policing the minutiae of student conduct, according to a behavioral code that turns the hierarchy of what matters and what doesn’t on its head, that things like protecting students from sexual assault and providing a rigorous liberal arts education get pushed to the side.

I’m pretty sure that by the time I stood up in Nash Auditorium and asked Walker about his double standard, I was already lumped in with the “bitter” upperclassmen. The younger classes wanted us to sit down and shut up, just as the younger students today want the same from PHCs critics. It’s as if they think we want PHC to be a failure, a giant lie.

But I’m not one of the bitter alumni because I revel in cynicism.

I’m a bitter alumna because I watched what happened at PHC day after day for four years and slowly realized that the shiny promise we had all been offered was an illusion.

Part Four >

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

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Homeschoolers U

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HA Editorial Team3 Comments

Homeschoolers U

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

My parents are very well meaning people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re eating that much food?”

“You’re wearing that dress?”

“Your attitude toward that boy seemed flirtatious.”

“That comment was too assertive.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She just told me how she loved me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

PHC Chancellor Michael Farris Responds to Independent Review Committee Report

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farris

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

Yesterday the Independent Review Committee (IRC) of Patrick Henry College (PHC) made public to PHC alumni their final report and recommendations about campus sexual assault. Requested by PHC’s alumni association and commissioned by the college on February 19, 2014, the the IRC’s purpose was to conduct “an independent review of the New Republic incidents, and those propounded by any other past allegations of sexual assault, either in this audit or a separate one.” (“The New Republic incidents” refer to numerous cases of sexual assault and harassment at PHC as reported by Kiera Feldman in The New Republic.) The committee consisted of 8 PHC alumni: Chair Megan Kirkpatrick, Jenna Lorence, Daniel Noa, Matthew Roche, Lindsay See, Holly Vradenburgh, Brian Wright, and an additional member whose employment prohibits disclosure. The IRC later added one final member, Jordan Wood Benavidez.

You can learn more about and read in entirety the IRC’s final report and recommendations here.

This morning, PHC Chancellor Michael Farris responded to the Independent Review Committee’s report and emailed that response to all PHC students. Farris provided an initial and personal response in the text of the email and then attached a document to the email that he said was “a reply from the College that I have written.” You can read Farris’s email response here and read Farris’s official Patrick Henry College response here.

A few important parts from both of Farris’s responses to highlight are:

• Michael Farris blames the media attention not on PHC’s poor handling of sexual assault cases but rather on a sense of Christian martyrdom:

“I believe that this focus has been aimed at PHC because of our faith, our visibility, and our success.”

• Michael Farris minimizes the two assault cases mentioned in The New Republic, referring to them as

“two incidents from years earlier that were clearly not on that level of criminality.”

• Michael Farris says “these discussions” — what discussions he means is not clear (is he talking about the IRC report? the New Republic piece? discussions about assault?) — are “unfair”:

“I believe in PHC students. These discussions unfairly taint all of us with a brush that clearly is not fair to many, many innocent people. Our students are, in the vast majority, among some of the finest, most honorable young men and women I’ve ever met.”

• Michael Farris says the College was not willing to allow the IRC to review the incidents mentioned in the New Republic, despite this being an express purpose of the IRC:

“The College did not believe that it was appropriate or possible for any such committee to conduct an investigation that would review disputed factual allegations from incidents that were several years old at the time of the New Republic article.”

• Encouragingly, it appears that PHC might actually implement a “substantial” number of the IRC recommendations: 

“While we cannot determine the exact content of future policies until further study and internal discussions, I will say as Chancellor that I would expect our future path to be in substantial accord with the suggestions made by the IRC.”

Again, you can read Farris’s email response here in entirety and read Farris’s official Patrick Henry College response here in entirety.

PHC Independent Review Committee Releases Final Report and Recommendations on Campus Sexual Assault

HA Editorial Team5 Comments

patrick henry college

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

Earlier this year, on February 17, Kiera Feldman wrote a revelatory piece for The New Republic detailing how Patrick Henry College (PHC) has handled sexual assault cases. Feldman’s story, entitled “Sexual Assault at Patrick Henry College, God’s Harvard,” caused an uproar among homeschool alumni, PHC graduates, and others. (Though it was not the first time someone publicly mentioned sexual assault at the so-called “God’s Harvard.” PHC alumnus David Sessions had already mentioned the fact the previous year, saying “Girls have been raped while attending Patrick Henry College: girls who I sat next to in class, by men who I sat next to in class. Other women I know were at different times mercilessly harassed, stalked and frightened—all on the campus of Patrick Henry College.”)

A day after Kiera Feldman’s piece was published, PHC fired back with a “Statement by Patrick Henry College to concerned alumni and students about article in The New Republic.” The college’s statement was disseminated that same day to alumni and a day later to PHC’s general student body (where it was met with student applause). The statement, which you can read here, claimed that, “PHC earnestly sought to do the right thing in each instance, did not attempt to cover-up any sexual crimes, and did not seek to blame women for the improper behavior of male students.”

PHC also stated that it had “commissioned a specialized legal firm to undertake an audit of our sexual harassment policy and procedures, both to review past events and to recommend further improvements.” In response to both the New Republic story as well as PHC’s statement, the college’s official alumni organization — Patrick Henry College’s Alumni Association (PHCAA) — issued their own statement to the college’s Board, Faculty, and Staff. As I reported at the time, “PHCAA said it condemned all acts of sexual abuse and harassment and ‘categorically rejected’ any form of victim-blaming. Without commenting on the particulars of the recently publicized sexual assault cases in Kiera Feldman’s piece in the New Republic, PHCAA stated that (1) it is a fact that students have experienced sexual mistreatment and (2) the college needs to provide better victim care.”

PHCAA also requested the college be “far beyond reproach” by allowing “an independent review of the New Republic incidents, and those propounded by any other past allegations of sexual assault, either in this audit or a separate one.” The college agreed to this request; on February 19 the PHC Independent Review Committee (IRC) was commissioned. The IRC consisted of 8 PHC alumni: Chair Megan Kirkpatrick, Jenna Lorence, Daniel Noa, Matthew Roche, Lindsay See, Holly Vradenburgh, Brian Wright, and one additional member “whose employment prohibits disclosure” (according to the IRC). The IRC later added one final member, Jordan Wood Benavidez.

Several days ago, on August 1, the IRC privately released their final report and recommendations. Today that report and recommendations were distributed to the PHC alumni community. You can view the “Final Report” here and the “Recommended Sexual Misconduct Policy” here.

The final report — addressed and sent directly to PHC Chancellor Michael Farris — reveals disturbing facts. Some of these facts include:

• The college administration tried to stonewall the IRC’s investigation:

“In early March, the Chair asked to interview College officials about past policies and instances of alleged sexual misconduct. On March 26, the Chair received an email from Dr. Walker directing theChair to abide by certain guidelines for the interviews. The same day, the Chair objected via email and provided a list of possible parameters for the interviews. According to Dr. Walker, College staff refused to be interviewed unless the Chair agreed to refrain from asking questions about the New Republic article and the incidents detailed therein.”

• There are serious discrepancies between the administration’s claims about the number of reported assaults and the students’ own claims:

“Dean Corbitt responded in writing on May 1, indicating that there had been only four (possibly five) instances of alleged sexual misconduct at PHC between 2006 and the present, along with brief answers to the other questions. On April 23, the Chair sent the College a survey for distribution to current students… The survey responses revealed a radical difference between the allegations of sexual misconduct that students and alumni claimed to have reported and the small number reported by Dean Corbitt on May 1.”

• The majority of the current PHC student body, as surveyed by the IRC, does not understand sexual assault:

“50.5% of respondents agreed or were neutral to the statement that someone has to fight back or tell someone to stop for a sexual encounter to be non-consensual.”

• At least 28 alumni — 2 of which were minors at the time — have been sexually assaulted or harassed during their time at Patrick Henry College. (Furthermore, this number only includes incidents from 2006 on. The college was founded in 2000.)

“28 respondents said that during their time at PHC, they were sexually assaulted or harassed in some way (including but not limited to stalking, harassing emails/phone calls, inappropriate touching, groping, being recorded/photographed without consent, and rape), and 2 respondents said at least one of the persons involved were under the age of 18.”

Again, you can view the “Final Report” here and the “Recommended Sexual Misconduct Policy” here in entirety.

Update, 08/06/2014: You can read PHC Chancellor Michael Farris’s response to the report and recommendations here.