Higher education faces hard choices these days, choices often dictated by the tightest budgets colleges and universities have seen in a decade. Improvident tax cuts by state legislatures and faltering investment returns have left educational institutions, both public and private, scratching for every nickel and dime. It took considerable guts, therefore, for William Jewell College to reject the demands of the Missouri Baptist Convention, a decision that cost the college nearly a million dollars, about 3 percent of its operating budget.
William Jewell College, named Liberal Arts College of the Year by Time magazine in 2001, is one of the oldest colleges west of the Mississippi River. It has a 154-year tradition of providing a rigorous liberal arts education in an atmosphere that encourages the exploration of religious values. Its students come from diverse cultural backgrounds; about 66 percent are not Baptists. The college has maintained close ties with the Missouri Baptist Convention, at least until recently.
According to the Online Baptist Standard news magazine, the trouble between the college and the convention began two years ago when a fundamentalist movement gained control of most convention boards and committees. The change prompted five Baptist institutions in the state to change their charters to create self-perpetuating boards. The convention is challenging their actions in court. William Jewell College, however, has always elected its own board. The convention leadership, unable to exert control over the college by packing its board, decided upon an alternative strategy. It launched a formal investigation of William Jewell's policies and practices. The committee charged with the investigation concluded, according to its chair, that the college failed to "fall in line with what we believe are God's teachings."
The Sun-News of the Northland reports that the committee faulted the college for insisting upon its right to elect its own trustees; permitting the student government to consider a change in the Student Bill of Rights to forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation; failing to censor the student newspaper; allowing a theater student to produce portions of the Vagina Monologues as a senior recital; declining to provide to the convention personal information about trustees and faculty, including their church membership and affiliations with non-college organizations; and refusing to outline its official position on the Genesis account of creation. When the college failed to address the convention's concerns, the convention's executive board by a vote of forty-four to four decided not to continue funding William Jewell. The chair of the board's administrative committee called the vote "a belabored, prayerful decision." He added: "It's about holiness, righteousness and godliness."
William Jewell's president, David Sallee, had a different take on the decision. "The whole thing is about control," he told the Sun-News of the Northland, "and it's about how you define 'superior Christian education.' We're just not going to allow the convention . . . to dictate what we do."
Sallee and the William Jewell board defended the college's independent system of governance. "Since its founding in 1849," Sallee said in a statement posted on the college Web site, "William Jewell has been governed by an independent, self-perpetuating board of trustees. And our work today continues a long tradition and commitment to creating a distinctively Christian environment in which a free exchange of ideas can occur that respects the intersection of faith and learning, as well as the individuals who participate in that process. Decisions about how the college is managed have historically been made by our board of trustees, by our faculty and administration, and not by others. This system of self-governance has served the college exceedingly well for more than a hundred and fifty years."
The case of William Jewell College illustrates the intimate connection between governance and academic freedom. In order to control what might or might not be thought and said on the William Jewell campus, the leadership of the Missouri Baptist Convention launched an attack on the college's independent system of governance. By seizing control of the board of trustees, the convention would have gained the ultimate say over administrative and faculty appointments, over what was taught and by whom, and over the whole tenor of student and community life on campus. But the college stood its ground, refusing to yield to these extortive demands. It cost the college considerable money, but, as Sallee told the Sun-News of the Northland, "In our minds the freedom and standing for the principles that we have stood for in this confrontation are well worth the money."
Copyright 2003 American Association of University Professors