While some college presidents have cowered under students’ cries of victimhood, resigning in shame or promising to change campus policies in order to maintain a “safe space,” Oklahoma Wesleyan University President Everett Piper is giving these kids what they really need: some tough love. In an op-ed acquired by The Washington Post, he boldly tells these self-entitled students to “grow up.”
Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a “safe place”, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that’s wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that’s wrong with them. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up!
This is not a day care. This is a university!
I hope I’m not the only one applauding.
While these truths need no context, Piper felt compelled to pen this bold letter after a student complained to him that a chapel service about love made him uncomfortable. (Really). The president showed some grace in not completely embarrassing this student, but offering some sound advice, letting him know more PC-friendly schools are available.
If you’re more interested in playing the “hater” card than you are in confessing your own hate; if you want to arrogantly lecture, rather than humbly learn; if you don’t want to feel guilt in your soul when you are guilty of sin; if you want to be enabled rather than confronted, there are many universities across the land (in Missouri and elsewhere) that will give you exactly what you want, but Oklahoma Wesleyan isn’t one of them.
At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered.
As a conservative college student at a liberal arts school, I had plenty of opportunities to feel “unsafe.” My ideals were challenged nearly every day. Did I demand the administration change their policies or my professors and peers silence their rhetoric so I could feel more welcome? Of course not. College is all about leaving your comfort zone and being exposed to different cultures and ideas. If you are as genuine to your values as you thought before enrolling in your classes, then you will graduate with those ideals more firm than ever and gain confidence that will translate to the real world.
Today’s college students can’t even handle a chapel.
Read Piper’s whole op-ed here. Be warned, students: it will make you uncomfortable.