Faculty angry at trustees over rejection of teacher
By Michael Burns

PINEVILLE, La. (ABP) — Louisiana College faculty members are in open rebellion over the board of trustees’ rejection of a teaching applicant, a vote some say is “an assault on academic freedom” at the Baptist school in Pineville, La.

The reaction to the rejection of prospective faculty member Lawanda Smith is the most visible public sign of the battle between so-called moderate and conservative Baptist factions for control of the college. Smith was turned down after undergoing what she described as an “inquisition” by board members.

The teaching faculty is going public with its project, unanimously passing a resolution asking the trustees to stay out of the hiring of prospective teachers and preparing a letter to be sent to alumni to “rally in support of Dr. Smith” to “preserve the traditional integrity of the institution from being compromised,” said Bill Simpson, professor of history.

Simpson said Smith’s rejection for the job of assistant professor of religion was “unprecedented” and has left the faculty “greatly concerned about what might be coming next.”

Members of the faculty wore white ribbons in support of Smith at the school’s recent graduation ceremonies. Some also had her initial, “L.S.,” displayed on their mortarboards.

Ex-President Robert Lynn said he was “extremely disappointed” by the board’s decision to turn down Smith, but he refused to comment about whether conservative Baptists on the board were behind the vote.

While Lynn refused to talk of the religious rift, Simpson said “there are a number of trustees who are acting in a most non-Baptist manner” by imposing conditions on what faculty members must believe and what they must teach.

“The faculty would like to keep the academic quality ... from being compromised by what seems to be clearly a faction within the trustees who would attempt” to control what is taught at the school, Simpson said.

Lynn said the decision was made in executive session, so he could not discuss the board’s reasons for not hiring Smith.

Stan Miller, a member of the board of trustees, also said he could not comment on the board’s action because it was done in executive session.

But he did say, “I feel like the trustees voted their convictions” based upon the information they were given. He agreed with the characterization that he was a “conservative” on the board.

Lynn, who is retiring after 20 years of running the school, said be believes “it is inappropriate for trustees to micromanage an institution and to get involved in the interviewing and selection of personnel.”

Lynn also said “the tendency to micromanage the institution ... will without question make it more difficult to attract an experienced, competent administrator” to replace him.

Smith, 35, graduated summa cum laude from Louisiana College in 1983. She holds a master’s degree in English from Louisiana Tech University and a master of divinity and doctorate in religious education from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. She has had eight years of college-level teaching experience.

She was teaching English on a one-year appointment before being asked to apply for the religion job, she said.

Those credentials and the strong recommendation of the administration are what make Smith’s rejection “just a slap in the fact to the school as well as an affront to Dr. Smith,” Simpson said.

Members of the board of trustees voted May 16 to approve six of the seven administration approved teaching applicants. Smith’s application was rejected by a one-vote margin.

Smith underwent what she and Simpson called “an inquisition” by trustees during a reception at the school before the board meeting. Four of the applicants were posted in different corners of a room, and groups of trustees would gather around them to ask questions.

Smith said she was prepared for some of the questions, including “inspiration of Scripture” and questions on her views on abortion.

But “by the end they were asking me questions that were irrelevant to my credentials or theological beliefs,” she said.

Some trustees “asked about wives being submissive to their husbands,” and then she was asked if she had shaken hands with the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary during her graduation ceremony last spring.

She said she answered “I did not intentionally snub the president,” who is classified as a conservative Baptist and who has “tremendously” changed the seminary during his tenure.

The seminary “is very anti-woman,” Smith said, and she gathered from the trustees’ questions they wanted to know if she agreed with that view.

“That is the kind of question I considered irrelevant as to whether or not I should get this job,” she said. “It wasn’t so much the questions as the manner in which they asked them,” including pressing “the finer points on inspiration of Scripture and social issues.”

Carlton Winbery, chairman of the religious studies division and the department of religion and philosophy, said Smith received the unanimous recommendation of his department and the administration.

He views the board’s vote as “aimed more at us, at me and the administration, than” at Smith.

Winbery said he believes the “trustees involved were basically in contact with the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention,” and they realized that they had the votes to reject Smith when only 24 members of the board attended the meeting.

Winbery, who was not in the meeting, said, based upon what he was told, the board’s reasons for voting against Smith “were in my opinion very, very superficial.”

Trustees “cited her (doctoral) dissertation in which she dealt with the educational theory of a person in South America who also had some Marxist connections. She did not in any way espouse any of his political theories,” she only critiqued his educational theories and used “that as a kind of basis for developing her own theory,” Winbery said

. “My understanding is that (the trustees) simply assumed that since she dealt with this person’s educational theory, she must have some sympathy for his political theories as well. And that is simply not true,” Winbery said.

Winbery also believes the trustees against Smith “didn’t understand her dissertation. They certainly had not read it.”

Winbery said the political battle for control of Baptist institutions has more to do with “power, control of the institutions” than with any great theological debate.

Ultimately, the conservative takeover of the college “would mean we would have to accept their particular interpretation of Scripture.... It would mean intrusion into the classroom in terms of the teacher-student learning process,” Winbery said.

The “intrusion into faculty development is very strongly discouraged by our accrediting agency,” Winbery said.

The future of the school also concerns Simpson, who said the strife will hurt the school’s ability to keep and recruit qualified teachers.

Smith said she is not sure where she will be teaching during the next school year. She said it is difficult enough to find a teaching job this late in the year, let alone finding one at a Christian school.

Reprinted with permission from the Alexandria- Pineville (La.) Town Talk.

September 1996