Should Liberty University Lose its Federal Loans/Accreditation for its position on Dems?

Great Debates
1

This is more of a GQ but it’ll probably end up here anyway.

For those not familiar, Liberty University is the Lynchburg Virginia institution founded by Jerry Falwell. It’s probably the most respected academic institution associated with the Fundamentalists.

Last year a student, Brian Diaz, a LU freshman, started a LU chapter of the Young Democrats, a fairly standard student organization at most colleges of similar size, though the first in LU’s history. Last week Liberty pulled the official recognition of the club by the administration. You can read the full email here; the emphases in the edited version below are mine:

Okey dokey. As you can imagine this has not proved a popular move with any Democrat, and even many Republicans who are left of Falwell have issues with it.

The university’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr. (you know that you work at an institution where academic freedom and knowledge comes first when the presidency is hereditary) was furious at accounts that he/the university had banned the club. Quite to the contrary, they were free to meet and free to belong, they just couldn’t talk about it or use Liberty anywhere in their name or receive any kind of university recognition or funding.

From here:

He was also furious that the group’s leader, Brian Diaz, had said that he perceived the email as stating that one could not be a good Democrat and a good Christian. Accusations of that kind of intolerance can hurt a guy.From here:

Now, if this were Bob Jones University (another hereditary fiefdom of Fundamentalist academia), there’d be no recourse at all. If BJU wanted to forbid women to speak in class and wanted to sponsor a “Hetero Whiteboy Jewhaters Club Car Wash and Bake Sale” they’d be absolutely within their rights. There’s a huge differences between BJ University and Liberty University however: accreditation.

BJU is not and makes no pretense at being and has no interest in being accredited by any secular organization. It is essentially a church school and a private organization and receives no more government funding than a Women’s Issues Book Club that meets in private homes or a Plumbers Union Bowling League- it’s a completely private organization. Liberty on the other hand is fully accredited by the Southeastern Association of Colleges & Schools, the exact same accreditation association that accredits the University of Virginia, Vanderbilt U., Lurleen B. Wallace Junior College, and any other private or public institution no matter how big or how small that wants to meet national standards and receive federal aid. It’s standards are the same as the northeastern version that accredits Harvard and the smallest community college in NY, or the west coast one that accredits UCLA and the tiniest technical college in Nevada. Liberty is also accredited on a probationary status by the American Bar Association, the probationary status being due to the newness of the law school rather than any philosophical or religious reasons, and the individual programs (education, pre-med, etc.) are accredited by whatever accreditation agency is over them in the region.

Now, Liberty U does not seek accreditation to feel good about themselves, but rather (among other reasons) so that their students can receive federal financial aid. It’s a private university so tuition is high- about $15,000 plus books and fees- and there aren’t scholarships for all students, so most students there (like most students at similarly priced colleges) borrow from the government or from lendors guaranteed by the government to go to school there. Without this, Liberty students would have to raise the funds in other ways or the University would have to raise a LOT of money to endow itself, more than they could ever probably hope to raise- or they’d have to cut way down. They could not continue doing business on the same scale as they currently operate at.

Consequently there are movements afoot to challenge Liberty’s accreditation and its tax exempt status and basically to seek revenge on their Dem ban by tampering its money lifeline to the Federal government (which given the university’s views on the Democratic congress and president I can only assume is their equivalent of the Fundamentalist Mormon apostates “bleeding the beast”). This isn’t the first movement to interfere as Liberty has many enemies and has since it’s inception almost 40 years ago.

So what began as a GQ:

Is Liberty University in violation of any policies that would affect their students’ ability to receive government direct or guaranteed loans? What about their tax-exempt status (because if they had to pay taxes they’d also be sunk)?

And on a different issue, how do schools like Liberty meet the SACS (or equivalent) accreditation for science courses when they discount evolution?

2

Does the school have an officially-sanctioned Young Republicans club?

3

There are so many reasons to withdraw all support for Liberty University that I can’t pick just ONE.

4

yup, as well as a Christian Conservatives club and several other clubs that strike me as similar type organizations (just going by the name).

Though they still allow an ultimate frisbee club, so at least the college dems have a place to go.

5

I believe the Federal rules are simply you can borrow money to go to an accredited school.

Glancing at the Undergrad portion of the SACS accreditation guideliness (in .pdf here: http://www.sacscoc.org/pdf/2008PrinciplesofAccreditation.pdf )

I don’t feel like searching all of the SACS and Federal Guidlines (Fed Here: http://www.ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea98/index.html ).

I don’t think that accreditation is path to shut this down, however.

6

Why can’t a university be unabashed about its political leanings?

7

There’s no problem there, you can have a Fundamentalist Islamic Madrassah if you like. The question is should a school that discriminates against students for their political leanings have a right to government loans for its students.

8

It is interesting and telling that Liberty University really is not about liberty at all.

9

Additionally, they might have their not-for-profit 501(c)(3) status revoked as in order to maintain that status you cannot endorse a candidate or political party. Revoking the Democratic Club recognition and yet maintaining the Republican one that does the same thing may run afoul of that.

Mswas is right that as a private institution they can do whatever they want but they are not necessarily entitled to tax breaks or federal funding if they do.

10

No tax exempt status, no fed funding, no accreditation. It’s no different that Bob Jones Uni.

11

Student loan status should remain unaffected. If they received direct government monies to, say, erect a statue to Falwell’s penile eminence, then we’d have a problem.

As an aside, I used to live in Lynchburg while I attended the former Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. Sexual assaults, federal investigations and money troubles at Liberty were common knowledge to Lynchburgers.

12

The risk is here ( like hate speech codes), is that if you did take away Liberty’s accreditation for banning the Democrat club, you would see actions to take away accreditation of many other universities for perceived hostility towards conservative groups. I was a Right Wing Rabble Rouser in my youth, and regularly paid for it with meetings with senior university officials at my school. If I could have threatened them with accreditation, I would have in a nanosecond.

Don’t do it - there will be backlash.

13

The first two I understand but not the accreditation part. Why should accreditation be subject to political affiliation?

14

I thought about saying cite? but decided I believe you without evidence. Instead I’ll replay details, por favor.

15

They had 4 reported forcible sex offenses per year in 2007 and 2006. Cite and cite. That’s roughly the same as Old Dominion and U-VA, two institutions in the same state and same size range (20,000 to 30,000 students). Liberty seems to be high in burglary compared to other institutions of similar size.

16

I deserve that.

Here’s the latest sexual assault story:
http://www.wset.com/news/stories/0409/616770.html

Anecdotally, I knew two different girls who were assaulted on campus. Each time the victim reported it to the campus police. Emily was told flat out that they didn’t believe her. The other waited while the attacker was questioned, and was then told it was a case of “he said, she said” and invited to leave. Right or wrong, neither pressed charges.

As for federal investigations:

He was ultimately exonerated.

Liberty’s financial woes were legion until Falwell himself died.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1677098,00.html (alllll the way at the bottom)
His $34 million dollar insurance paid off their debts, and possibly forestalled a loss of academic accreditation.

Before this, Reverend Moon (yes, THAT Moon!) bailed them out in 1995:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2004/10/more_on_the_falwellmoon_connec.php
Where Moon got the cash is anyone’s guess.

Anecdotes that are to be taken with varying dashes of salt:

Liberty students were banned from the R-MWC library. They would check out books on the occult, Satanism, evolution, whatever and either not return them or deface them. I once opened a book about Santeria and found a large index card inside scrawled “READERS OF THIS BOOK ARE GOING TO HELL!! REPENT AND LET JESUS INTO YOUR HEART!”

Falwell drove a large shiny black SUV. One of his little games was revving the engine and pretending to run over someone in the Liberty administrative parking lot.

Supposedly there is an ongoing feud between Liberty and the City of Lynchburg regarding taxes. (Liberty is a campus of 4400 acres, straddling some of Lynchburg and some of Campbell County.)

Not so anecdotally, check out the campus living guide: http://www.liberty.edu/media/1210/ON%20CAMPUS%20LIVING%20GUIDE%2002_09.pdf
You can’t watch Rated R movies.

There’s more, but all these anecdotes in Great Debates are enough as it is.

17

I actually wasn’t asking for a citation. I just wanted more details.

It’s probably my own fault that no one believes me when I’m being sincere, but I’m going to blame someone else anyway. Damn that Sarah Palin.

18

If you want a much more nuanced view of life within Liberty, check out the book The Unlikely Disciple by a Brown Journalism Major who went undercover at Liberty for a year and found both stereotypes confirmed and dismissed. Among some of the surprising things about Liberty is that there actually are gay students on campus although their presence is very much on the down low.

19

Were you in trouble for rabble rousing or being conservative? If the biggest punishment you received was meetings, I’m not too sympathetic. If you don’t think actions should be punished somehow, I assume you’d be against any punishment for SDS rioters.
The Dems here seem to be in trouble not for doing anything, but for thought crimes.

20

The real issue (to the university) is that my group had an impact on donations due to communications with alumni. There were veiled threats a few times, and one bit of legal action regarding our use of the unversity name that we fought off thanks to an alumnus who is an attorney. We used the power of the alumni network, along with some friendly attorneys (including the Federalist Society folks at the Law School) to protect us. The university never did much directly while I was there, but if anything WOULD have happened we would have happily gone after our own school’s accreditation (not always the highest Wisdom score).