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Letter From Gay Alumni Creates Controversy at a Christian College

February 16, 2011, 12:01 pm

An open letter from 31 gay and lesbian alumni of Westmont College, a nondenominational Christian institution in California, and 100 fellow alumni who support them has created controversy on the campus, reports the Los Angeles Times. The letter expresses empathy with gay students at the college, which requires students to sign a behavior code that prohibits “homosexual practice,” among other things. The student newspaper published the letter without the names of those who signed it. A group of faculty members posted their own letter in response to the alumni, asking for more dialogue.

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  • bearjimmy

    At least the group of 31 alumni have taken a step toward addressing this wrongful discrimmination on their undergraduate campus. Hopefully, a meaningful dialogue will take place. On the other hand, anyone matriculating at Westmont had to sign the pledge prior to setting foot on campus, which puts a stamp of approval on the college’s sorry position. It is difficult to believe that any Christian organization would openly prohibit a person from following up on a pesonal level with the person they have fallen in love with. Indeed, it is a good thing to object to casual sex regardless of who is involved. But, prohibiting two people who are attracted to each other from following-up on the attraction via dating which might well invovle sex is wrong unless all sex is prohibited on campus for the administration, faculty, staff, and student body. Indeed, it is a good thing when two gay people date, and commit to a lifetime together, as opposed to casual sex in campus toilets, and elsewhere especially after dark with people they may or may not know, or ever see again.

  • spockkk

    Westmont’s stand on homosexuality is not unlike that of a hundred or more Christian colleges and universities across the country. The behavioral expectation that is mandated of its students as a result of this stand is, I am sure, made clear to student applicants up front in the process. To seal the deal, it sounds like students are then required to sign a covenant promising to abide by the rules of the college. Now, if officials at Westmont campaigned against the lifestyles of individuals not associated with the College, they would be overstepping the boundaries of their influence. It seems, however, that Westmont has limited its power to enforce policy upon students who have signed in agreement with the set-forth rules. As heartless and trite as it may sound, I would ask why the students in question chose to attend Westmont in the first place, given the institution’s stand on homosexuality?

  • geoz32

    Westmont can certainly discriminate legally. They can ignore the reality of the world in as many ways as any other religion…. to their own detriment and to the detriment of the many students who come to know their sexual identity more clearly after enrolling in this kind of institution. They can also rename their institution to Denial University, which would be legal.
    My opinion is that they need to reconsider the morality of their legal decisions.

  • http://whytheology.wordpress.com/ Trey Medley

    As someone who went to a Christian college for my undergraduate degree, I sympathize with these students. Granted, I don’t know the specifics of Westmont’s policy, but at my undergraduate alma mater, the policy was more or less non-enforcable. All extra-marital sex was prohibited, and while heterosexual sex would result in expulsion, homosexual sex would grant the option of either expulsion or counseling. Thus, while insulting, the policy for homosexual sex was actually more lenient. In actual fact, none of the policies were enforced and were on the books mostly to keep some of the older trustees happy. Even so, the fact that such a policy existed served to demean those students who were gay and offer an excuse for other students to discriminate against them. The result was a lot of repression and “closet” homosexuality. Often times the students do not choose to attend such schools, their parents do (as in they will only pay for those schools, or will disown them if they don’t go to such schools). Other times, the students only discover their homosexuality once enrolled. Still, the most often reason was that students still held their faith to be important to them, despite the homosexuality. It is a shame that such policies exist in institutions of higher learning (and I would argue I received a top notch education in spite of the policies), but as they are private church-related institutions, there is no legal warrant for challenging the policy.

  • goxewu

    A longtime acquaintance of mine went to a school like Westmont. He was fond of saying, “I went to a small Christian college, and all my friends are small Christians.”

  • facultydiva

    The students may not necessarily be there by their own choice, but by that of their parents.

  • http://twitter.com/ElizaWadson Eliza Wadson

    Social media meets the classroom.

  • anon1972

    I’m always a bit skeeved when a professor’s undergraduates casually call them by their first names even to outsiders and talk of “cult status” — yes, this can actually be a useful pedagogical tool, but I’m uncomfortable with it, personally. BUT I think the idea of using Facebook or similar sites as a place to do informal literary criticism and set an example of, so to speak, “living the critical life” is brilliant. EXCEPT that you have to friend “Jeff” to read them, which means he is friending all his undergraduates on Facebook, which again skeeves me out. Perhaps he just uses Facebook very differently from most people. But for me, it’s the place where I keep in touch with far-flung family and personal friends; even though I don’t post REALLY personal information there, anyone with access to my profile knows far more about me (even simple, innocuous things like the date of my birthday and the identity of my husband) than I would feel comfortable sharing, even passively, with undergraduates. So posting stuff there for my undergrads to read wouldn’t work at all — unless, I supposed, I created a second profile for myself with no information at all beyond my name, and posted them there.

  • a_voice

    I think that many faculty members would share your concerns. Your idea of a second profile would work. Also, you could set up a Facebook page, which again could help you keep things separate from your personal profile.

  • http://www.facebook.com/trishjw Patricia Wilson

    I am just trying to find some of Mr. Nunokawa’s essays to see if they are something I wish to spend time with.  I liked what I read in the New Yorker but I still just find other people’s ideas, not his essays.

  • 11191774

    There are a couple of problems in this piece.  The first and biggest is the failure to recognize that the terms “need-based” aid and “merit-based” aid are not even definable.  

    If you begin with the government’s EFC you are completely missing the point; although EFC is often referred to as “Expected Family Contribution” and most definitions of “need” flow from that, EFC is not–and never was–a estimator of how much families should be able to contribute to college costs.  It IS–plain and simple–a switch the government throws to control expenditures on the federal level. When the wonks in the GAO tinker with the EFC calculations, it’s not to help families estimate their contribution, it’s to cut down on Pell Grant expenditures.

    And if you go further, and look at the College Board/CSS Profile, it’s even worse: That’s a tool specifically designed to extract higher costs from sucker families who are obsessed with having a name-brand education at any cost.

    A family with two children and a $140,000 income that after taxes takes home $110,000, for instance, has no “need” at an institution whose COA is about $40,000.  But can we really expect that family to spend 36% of it’s available income (before mortgages, utilities, transportation, etc.) for college?  I suspect not.

    The second is the presumption that “aid” resides in a pot of money at the end of some rainbow.  In fact, most places do not “spend” or “reallocate” this expenditure.  It’s a discount, or variable cost that only happens when it’s backed up by revenue flowing into the university in the form of an enrollment.  If you have a 100 admitted students in that $140,000 range and tell them all they don’t have need, you will enroll almost none of them, unless you’re one of the elite institutions in the nation that cater to the brand conscious.   You will have no revenue, and you can’t “spend” or “allocate” that aid to someone else, because it does not exist in the first place.

    Fix the definition of need before proposing silly solutions to a problem that does not exist.

  • co80121

    @chronicle-8f2c72587779b217a77985a2cf0379fd:disqus You provide some very useful information which I largely agree with. However, it is your final line that gets me. The problem does exist and there is a ton of research which documents the problem. None of the info you share in any way refutes the fact that the problem discussed in this article exists. Likewise, why is this solution silly? I think it is worth serious consideration.

  • crababby

    I agree with co80121.  The problem does exist.  A number of colleges now have a discount rate of 50% or more, and the majority of the “expenditure” (discount) goes to provide so-called merit scholarships.  Colleges have hiked up their tuition (for years) and then turned around and offered it back in the form of these merit awards — increasingly at the expense of the needy family.  A family pats itself on the back over a $10,000 a year merit award, and ends up paying $12,000 out of its own pocket for a sticker price $22,000 education, when the college’s actual E&G is more like $10,000. It’s not a simple problem, but I agree that this “solution” is worth serious consideration..    .

  • 11142568

    I am not clear what world Dr. Kahlenberg lives in. As other commenters have noted, financial aid is a counter-revenue item, a discount applied to the sticker price.   Like all discounts, the goal is to “move the merchandise” and make the revenue projection.  Many of our institutions have little or no endowment.  Tuition from enrollment is how we keep in business.   As much as we can, we would like to help students who have financial need, but we would also like to have qualified students who will be induced to come  by a little discount.   There was a time – pre-Reagan – when federal financial aid  and state financial aid could help pay a very large proportion of tuition at moderately priced colleges.   But that is long ago and far away. And we could serve more needy students.  Unless we have huge endowments, we now need students who are very able or more or less able to pay  They may be able to pay more, but are unwilling, and we need them to bring in our budgets on target.    The economics of keeping our colleges afloat is very complex when the country has turned to the right, believes that government should be less, and taxes least. I remember watching Ronald Reagan early in his presidency talking about less spending in education.   I said to myself.  He is is going to destroy us.  He didn’t quite succeed, but discounting strategies are part of his legacy.  Peter Baker   

  • caveat2

    It is time to “invest” (with financial aid–tuition discounting) in those students who have the greatest probability of being successful. Why should some student whose family income is low and who has little probability of being successful be given any aid. I don’t invest in stocks that are likely to go bankrupt. I invest in stocks that have a high probability of producing a high rate of return on my investment. Education is no different.

    THE ONLY  CRITERIA for financial discounting of tuition should be probability of academic success. This success is not only retention success at the college, but success in the world, and an expectation of those students’ future alumni contributions, bringing  acclaim to the college, recruitment of those applicants’ peers who will also go to the college (and are themselves able to pay the tuition –which pays the bills at the college!) without discounting, and generates a “demand” for admission.

    All other criteria are uneconomical in the long and short-run to the college and the nation.

  • 11191774

    CO80121 and Crababby: The solution is silly because it uses meaningless terms to define the problem.  And if you believe there is a problem because someone has used bad definitions in order to prove the problem exists, that’s really convoluted logic.

    Let me repeat: There is no meaningful distinction between need-based aid and merit-based aid (at least until you get to the upper reaches of family income where it becomes obvious).  So proposing that the government force institutions to do more of one undefinable thing instead of another undefinable thing makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.So, I repeat: Fix the definition of need before proposing silly solutions to a problem that does not exist.

  • wmahoney52

    Not all federal student aid is means tested. While a student, and parent for dependents, must complete a FAFSA, anyone, regardless of income, is eligible for an Unsubsidized Stafford. Also, Grad students and parents of dependent students can receive a GradPlus/PLUS loan regardless of their income, assuming the can pass the simple credit test.

    FAO person

  • idomeneo

    Decisions on the “probability of being successful” are made by the *Admissions* office – it is not Financial Aid’s job, and they should not enter into that decision. Their job is to aid the students the admissions office identifies as promising.

    “Why should some student whose family income is low and who has little probability of being successful be given any aid”

    caveat2, you are coming very, very close to tying low family income with a lack of success.
    How about this instead: fewer cost-effective failures and non-entities (GW Bush?, Dan Quail?, and an army of others bringing similar “acclaim” to their alma maters) taking seats away from the bright young talent out there among the “less-cost-effective” 90% of the population.

    Funny you didn’t use “success” in your last sentence, as in what will bring success in the long-run to the college and the nation.

  • johnsondrj

    It’s simply not an “either/or” situation, i.e. either merit or need-based aid, at most independent colleges and at many public universities as well. 

    When a student who is needy also qualifies for merit-based aid (almost always the case with the middle income students described here), the financial aid award will always include merit-based gift assistance first — and other need-based gift assistance will be added later.  The calendar drives this.  Students apply first for admission and submit FAFSAs later.  Merit-based scholarships are often awarded in the fall based on students’ academic records – well before their FAFSA results are received on campuses, beginning in January. 

    Colleges know that the ego gratification of the merit-based scholarship (for students and their families) always trumps similar cash value (to the family) of a need-based grant.  If students demonstrate sufficient need, their awards will include the merit-based scholarship; perhaps a need-based, college-funded grant; private, outside scholarships and grants; then Federal and state aid; etc.  So, analyses that lump all aid into one-or-the-other buckets (merit vs. need-based) will always be off the mark.  Much college discounting is a mixture of both.

  • idomeneo

    I’d just like to comment that a household with an income of $140/$110K will have had discretionary income for some time now to make investments and set aside for their children’s education. A $40K tuition won’t amount to a sudden 36% drop in available income.
    And a second child in a $40K/year college will trigger financial aid.

    “The terms “need-based” aid and “merit-based” aid are not even definable.”

    They are not “defined”, in the sense that they are not set in stone, and, as you pointed out, the formula will vary as a product of available funding. But when shrinking funds are not going to those who most need it, that is a problem that very much exists.

  • hansonjb

    while the percent might be nearly equal between the number of students receiving merit and need based aid–i’m wondering what the $ amount is. many students receive merit aid at our school of $2500 while the need based aid students sometimes reach the full cost of tuition and housing ($50kish).   so, how many dollars are going to merit and how many to need based aid?

    i support need based aid but merit is important too.

  • idomeneo

    “Colleges know that the ego gratification of the merit-based scholarship (for students and their families) always trumps similar cash value (to the family) of a need-based grant.”

    LOL, so true.

    But that’s middle class.
    As a first generation student, I depended on need aid to get through college. I *never* applied for any scholarships, because it would have been a mountain of paperwork for a couple of hundred dollars here and there (vs. thousands for tuition), which would have been deducted from my other aid anyway.

    For wealthy students not receiving need-based aid, merit scholarships are simply a gift to take home with them.

  • idomeneo

    “Colleges know that the ego gratification of the merit-based scholarship
    (for students and their families) always trumps similar cash value (to
    the family) of a need-based grant.”

    LOL, so true.

    But that’s middle class.
    As a first generation student, I depended on aid to get through college. I *never* applied for any scholarships, because it would have been a mountain of paperwork for a few hundred dollars here and there (vs. thousands for tuition), which would have been deducted from my need aid anyway.

    For wealthy students not receiving need-based aid, scholarships are simply a gift to take home with them.

  • jgianandrea

    Merit aid can be
    interpreted as a ‘weapon in the battle for talent’, or in less severe words- it
    is used to shape a class. Universities use merit aid to compete for the students
    they want to attend their institution. But, as this article shows, the balance
    between ‘need based’ and ‘merit aid’ is becoming lopsided. Less needy students
    are getting more. What if there was an alternative to this? What if there were a
    product that allowed schools to successfully fight the battle for talent without
    giving more aid to the students that don’t necessarily need it? SAGE Tuition
    Advantage is a low cost financing option schools can use to counter this effect.
    Offering a low cost loan in lieu of some of the merit aid allows the university
    to recapture some revenue and recycle it into additional need based awards.

  • graddirector

    When my husband and I both defended our Ph.D.s, he was in the field with less employment opportunities but scored a great postdoc.  Thus, I worked on getting a postdoc close to him (it was the DC area so no sacrifices for me really).  Five years later, he has a permanent job and I start looking for TT jobs.  While he was planning on giving up his job then if I got something, it turned out I scored a job within 2 hour drive of his and he could telecommute 1/2 time.  Thus for the next ten years, he would live in a rented room 4 days every two weeks and be home for the next 10.  We did this through my tenure track period (I would concur with the other posters that this was nice, I would work crazy hours while he was gone and then pay attention to him when he was home) and two post tenure babies (not so fun being a “single mother” during those times though).  When the kids were entering school though, my husband’s job was losing its sparkle with some changes there, it was getting harder to do the single mother thing with the advent of after school “activities” and he really wanted to spend more time with the kids too.  Thus, he quit that very high paying job five years ago and took a local one at 1/2 the salary located two blocks from my office.  While he is bored in the job, he is having a ton of fun doing the dad thing and never had hard driving ambition in his career so I dont think there is much resentment in the end.  So, while his former high salary would be nice, in the end, we are paying for a really great standard of living.

  • abcde1234

    This: “never had hard driving ambition in his career”. I think that is the key-the asymmetries in ambition. My husband and I were pretty equally matched in our early career accomplishments and scholarly abilities. And since we were both in biomedical science we were lucky enough to be able to find postdocs and even faculty positions in the same city. But at some point it became clear to me (less clear to him, interestingly) that he was going to be able to sustain the insane level of ambition and competitiveness for long enough to propel himself to international stardom, and I was looking for a meaningful, enjoyable way to feel like I was having a positive impact on the people around me, contribute to the household income, and find the time to do other meaningful things outside of work. Having a kid helped clarify this. The realization has made my various career transitions and a relocation driven by his opportunities happen not only without resentment, but with a sense that we are a team, and new opportunities for him can mean new opportunities for me, so long as I maintain a broad definition of “opportunity”. 

    I know lots of two-career couples, and almost all of them are asymmetric in some way. This is especially true if there are kids. One is the super ambitions internationally famous scientist, and the other is just a regular academic who is good enough to get by. Sometimes the big shot is the woman, sometimes the guy (or sometimes it’s the other women-I don’t know too many male-male academic power couples, not sure why that is). 

    I like to say : I used to be a successful scientist. Now I just sleep with one.

  • esineva

    Our family is example of the wrong decision. My husband is older. At the beginning it seems to be reasonable that his career is of first priority. Right now it is bi-coastal scientific marriage, with sporadic family reunions and small chances to improve situation in the nearest future.

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