Last week, Congressman Walter Jones asked the U.S. Department of Education to look into the problem, calling it part of "an ongoing problem of censorship of Christian students" at Chapel Hill.
Yesterday, the fraternity, Alpha Iota Omega, filed suit in federal court, naming the Chancellor and Board of Trustees as defendants. There was a story in the News and Observer yesterday, and today it is the top headline in the daily edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education on the Web.
Some people, who seem to be overrepresented among university administrators, do not believe that part of diversity is having organizations of students who hold allegiance to a higher power in their lives. We in the Christian faculty/staff community beg to differ. What we want to know is this: Will the new Chancellor be someone who recognizes the importance of spirituality in the lives of students, or will it be someone who tries to make the university as secular as possible? A policy of enforced secularism is not enlightenment, it is repression.
Now of course, this all happened at Chapel Hill. N.C. State is ?not? Chapel Hill. And we don't need a Chancellor like they have at Chapel Hill. These cases show how much the selection of a Chancellor matters.
We do not want a Chancellor whose policies invite Congressmen to demand an investigation of our university by the U.S. Dept. of Education.
We do not want a Chancellor who makes policies that get the university and the Board of Trustees sued in federal court.
We in the Christian faculty/staff community call on you to make sure the next Chancellor is someone who respects, and is sympathetic to, the rights of religious students.
Thank you.
It is difficult to overstate the significance of what Ed Gehringer and the 135 courageous members of the NCSU Christian Faculty/Staff Community have just done.
They have reminded us that a life without principles is not worth living. And, of course, no principle is really our own unless we are willing to defend it in the face of adversity. Most of all, they remind us that injustice thrives only when good people remain silent.
How long will it be before these courageous actions become the rule rather than the exception? And how long will like-minded Christians continue to wander in the desert?
Dr. Mike S. Adams is the host of www.DrAdams.org. Log on to his website to see his first ?Book of the Month? selection. And move over Oprah Winfrey!