I’m actually surprised by the overwhelming reaction in this thread. I admit, the increased degree of freedom must be a welcome bonus to the students of Wheaton.
However, I see a certain beauty in denying oneself certain indulgences and pleasures. I hope I’m not the only one. Some people think that an overabundance of luxury is detrimental to a person, and that there are far more important things in life than securing a maximal amount of comfort for oneself. They think that many pleasures are superficial and distract from the things people should be concentrating on. In this philosophy, self-regulation and privation is an important part of education.
But the restriant is only beautiful if it is done willing and done out of responsbility. It’s different from legalism, which I believe this particular school is (or was) of guility of.
Exactly. Its the difference from, in the 1910s, deciding to stop drinking yourself (possibly a good thing) to hopping on the Prohibition amendment wagon. People should not be forced by law or heavy-handed “tradition” to do what society feels is right for themselves even if society is, in fact, correct. The people will derive no lesson nor ethical understanding from the situation and will certainly experience no gratitude to those stopping them. Were you happy when your parents told you that you couldn’t do something because it might hurt you? I certainly wasn’t, even if their forbidding proved correct. All society should do, outside of blocking your direct harmful actions towards others is advise and help. Otherwise all value is lost.
Except in this case people voluntarily went to Wheaton knowing the rules that they were supposed to follow. They could have chosen to go elsewhere where dancing and the inevitable fornication to follow was allowed.
Slight hijack-I know the bassist of the Rhythm Rockets, and he told me they were planning on opening the set with the theme from Footloose (they’d learned it just for the occasion). I wonder if anyone there got the joke.
Ultimately, a person’s lifestyle should be a choice made by that person; I emphatically do not deny this. But keep in mind that Wheaton is a school. They’re there to teach. It’s damn hard to teach any type of ethics if your students aren’t required to observe those ethics. And there’s no reason to go to Wheaton if you don’t want this type of education.
No, it isn’t guilty of that at all. Every student and faculty member at Wheaton is there because he/she chooses to be there.
Priam -
I agree with your last statement, but we’re not talking about society here; we’re talking about a single institution. Everybody who chooses to go there knows (presumably) what he/she is getting into, and presumably they go there because they want the type of education Wheaton has to offer.
I think you’re missing the point here. Of course I wasn’t happy. But the point isn’t to make people happy; it’s to teach them. And again, we’re not talking about society; we’re talking about a school.
I don’t know… I think you all would be surprised by how normal us Christian College kids can be.
Of course, the rest of all liked to laugh at Wheaton’s dance policy as well… now what will we do with all the time in between mandatory prayers?
To the Weak Force: Dancing doesn’t have to interfer with learning, does it? Should we deny ourselves something because it is pleasurable?
What if a break from your studies helps you to refocus and learn more easily?
What if you take pleasure in remaining isolated and untouched? Should you then force yourself out of your hermit’s cave and into an intimate relationship as a matter of discipline?
No, it doesn’t have to interfere at all. But depriving oneself of certain pleasures isn’t necessarily a means to other educational goals; it can be a part of education itself.
Maybe. (I can actually relate to this. Being alone with one’s own thoughts for extended periods can be intoxicating (not to mention enormously counterproductive, but that’s neither here nor there).) But I certainly wouldn’t fault any particular institution just because they tolerate some pleasures while forbidding others; it all depends on the type of education they want to provide.
Even when the ethnic set are questionable, back-dated and out of mis-interperation, say for a Christian school, the Bible?
Wheaton is a Christian school, so let talk some Christanity here. Theleogists have observed that the rules presented in the Bible are not as important as the percepts. Each rule has a percept behind it, the percept is relevant till this day, the rule is not. For example, the rule in the Bible which the child who curse the parents shall be stoned to death. Is this applicable in today’s context? Hardly. But the percept of being respectful to one’s parents, the intent behind the rule, remains.
Now, consider Wheaton’s rule of now allowing students to watch movies. I don’t know what’s the percept behind that rule, but I could hazzard a guess - they believe that movies were evil. Why are movies evil? I would not guess their reasoning - or whether it is just their gut reaction. The rule suggests a percept, and that rule suggests a percept which is arrived wrongly.
That this rule has a wrong percept has been proven by reality - many church-going Christians I know go to the movies. Yes, there are some Christians who has choosen not to go to the movies, for their own good and honourable reasons.
What I find church-goers are capable off is to impose their own personal restrictions on other and call it God’s law or God’s word.
As for everyone who went to Wheaton chose to go there, that’s a sweeping generalisation. I don’t know the age group, but I could find one who didn’t choose to go there, if I am allowed to conduct a search.
Man. I go to a Catholic college and none of this stuff goes on. Hell, we even have coed dorms that aren’t separated in to wings or anything, which creates a 24-hour coeducational drunkenness session with lots of access to beds during the weekends (and, to a lesser extent, the week).
We have a Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered Association, and campus ministry actually showed up at one meeting to show their support! We can’t hand out condoms with school money or in the school’s name, though, or in the name of a school organization.
Interesting that the catholics run schools that are so much more laid-back than the protestants.
All nice and fun, just cute. But really nothing more than a blip in the popular culture.
As to LostCause’s comment, sure there are people there for whom it was not exactly their preference. Same as you’d likely find at State U., or at The Citadel, or at Agnes Scott College. But anyway it’s just 4 years. I’d rather look at the curriculum than at the dancing/partying/fraternization policies to determine if they’re being backward or just quaint.
I attended a university that received a fair amount of funding from the Southern Baptist Convention. Alcohol on campus was a no-no, as was dancing.
When I was a junior or a senior (the memory blurs with age), the school made the announcement that certain areas of the campus would be “designated dancing zones.” In those zones, it would be permissable to dance. The rationale for this was that numerous organizations on campus (fraternities, sororities, clubs, etc.) were going off-campus to have their functions, and the school didn’t want students driving back to campus late at night.
I was taking a philosophy course at the time, and the professor of that course had a field day with that announcement. We spent a solid week discussing the nature of sin, and how a Christian school could waffle on such a topic. Either dancing was wrong, and should not be tolerated at all, or dancing was fine, in which case it should be okay to dance anywhere on campus, and not just in the “designated zones.”
For self-amusement purposes, I began incorporating a few dance moves into my daily walk to class. I would be hurrying along the sidewalk, then suddenly start dancing. (My wife can tell you how hysterical this must have been to onlookers. Apparently I have all the grace of a three-days-dead parking garage.) Anyway, after the dancing fit had passed, I would point to that section of sidewalk and tell others, “Be careful. That’s a dancing zone.”
