Quiet amid controversy: School's backers blame politics, media for outcry against its practices, views

Friday, March 3rd 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

GREENVILLE, S.C. - The young women in long dresses and the men in neckties watched impassively Tuesday as the television in the Bob Jones University student center cycled through news reports, one after another casting stones.
Intolerant. Radical right. Extremist. The words rolled off without anyone even rolling their eyes in reply. About two dozen students stood by silently watching the TV, which around here only shows recorded videos approved by the university.
"You have to expect it like that with people in politics," said one young lady with straight brown hair and a shy smile, lipstick-free to be sure.
That is all anyone on this campus will say. While the political tempest whirls around, those inside the black iron fence of Bob Jones know only the calm of the hurricane's eye.
But separation is a lesson of faith for Bob Jones University.
GOP presidential candidates - Bob Dole, Dan Quayle, Phil Gramm, Ronald Reagan - have brought the brief heat of a spotlight to this campus for years, but nothing compared to the scorch of criticism that followed the Feb. 2 speech of George W. Bush.
An outcry led by GOP presidential candidate John McCain over the school's opposition to interracial dating and Catholic doctrine have led the two Republicans invited into the gates this year, Alan Keyes and Mr. Bush, to repudiate their host. On Tuesday, congressional Democrats in Washington introduced a resolution condemning the school for its "practice of prejudice and message of intolerance."
Bob Jones defenders express anger and surprise that this small, private school should be accused of bigotry and hatred. history just as obviously as the trim, conventional yellow-bricked buildings dot its 200 acres.
Still, criticism has never come like this. And school officials blame the media for the "sudden hatred and bigotry" directed their way.
Bob Jones officials have declined to respond to Mr. Bush, who said he caused "needless offense" by speaking on campus without doing more to distance himself from anti-Catholic sentiments and racial prejudice.
Off campus, those associated with Bob Jones were wounded by Mr. Bush's comments. But more directly, they believe that it's the media that have committed the greater sin.
"The problem is that everyone accepts the media portrayal, including now Governor Bush's campaign. There's nothing to apologize for," said Terry Haskins, speaker pro tem of the South Carolina State House and a Bob Jones '76 graduate.
Mr. Haskins said Bob Jones' theology is different from other doctrines, "but to say they are Catholic haters, as has been said, is an absurdity."
He said he disagrees with the ban on interracial dating, but that it, too, is based on religious beliefs and "does not have anything to do with one race being better than another."
The Rev. Joseph A. Darby, the state NAACP's first vice president, has a different view. The university can dress it up as theology, he said, but "I believe their reading of the Scripture is a gross misinterpretation. I find it offensive as a Protestant Christian."
He said that while the South Carolina chapter of the NAACP has not taken an official position on Bob Jones University, he speaks as a minister and civil rights advocate.
"I find them intolerant," Mr. Darby said.
Even Pat Robertson, a Bush supporter who has become a lightning rod in the GOP race, once described Bob Jones as being "out there."
The school began as a college in Florida in 1927, founded by Bob Jones Sr., the son of an Alabama sharecropper. He was a fiery evangelical preacher and a Southern segregationist. The school relocated to Tennessee two years later but moved to South Carolina in 1947 when the state donated the Greenville campus.
The school "exists against all human odds," says current president Bob Jones III, the founder's grandson. "When you walk onto the campus, you have entered into a miracle."
The campus life certainly is far from ordinary.
While nonaccredited, the university offers a rigorous curriculum in more than 100 majors, including music, art and film. Its art museum is famous and boasts religious paintings dating from the 13th century, including works by Rubens.
Begun as a college to train missionaries, it now wants to produce well-educated and cultured Christians. Tuition is $10,000 a semester.
"It's regarded as a high-quality educational institution," said Mr. Haskins. "The Big Eight accounting firms actively recruit its graduates. And its education students consistently score at the highest levels on the state national teacher exams."
It is a point of pride, he said, that its 5,000 students "refuse to conform to the world."
Instead, they conform to a long list of rules strict enough to make most teenagers wince.
Daily chapel is mandatory. Girls wear ankle-length dresses. Boys wear khakis and button-down shirts. Most wear neckties. No jazz, no rock, no blues. No radios. No movies. No dancing. No dating off campus without chaperons. No dating on campus except in a designated room in the student center, where hosts are present. No holding hands. No kissing. And, of course, no interracial dating.
While university leaders deny they are racist or anti-Catholic, the school's history is splashed with the kind of statements that haunted Mr. Bush.
Bob Jones Sr. wrote that he believes in keeping the races separate because "God is the author of segregation."
It was Bob Jones Jr. who compared Catholicism to a satanic cult. And it was the current president, Bob Jones III, who called then-Vice President George Bush "the devil."
Only after 1975 court orders did the school admit nonwhite students. In 1983, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling stripped the school of its tax-exempt status, citing its discriminatory practices.
The ruling prompted Dr. Jones III to tell Christianity Today magazine: "Our nation from this day forward is not better than Russia insofar as being able to expect the blessing of God."
Two years ago, the school made news when it informed a university graduate, now an ordained minister who had publicly acknowledged being gay, that he would be arrested for trespassing if he returned to campus.
In the wake of the current adversity, Dr. Jones III and other school leaders have cut off media interviews.
But they issued a four-page paper last week explaining their views, mostly in a series of posed questions.
On interracial dating: "Racism and hatred are not part of our institutional character. . . . [The media] have magnified something that we don't magnify and never discuss."
Catholicism: "If there are those who wish to charge us with being anti-Catholicism , we plead guilty. But we are not Catholic-haters."
Mr. Darby of the NAACP said he and other religious leaders take issue with Bob Jones' scriptural interpretations.
"I suspect there will be an anti-Christ," he said. "I don't see that it will be as clearly defined as they believe. I don't think he will be the pope."
The Interfaith Alliance, a nonpartisan, clergy-based organization, applauded Mr. Bush's decision this week to express regret for his Bob Jones speech.
But former student David Lovegrove, now of Georgia, said critics are wrong to believe that students blindly accept the policies of the university. He said he understands the silence emanating currently from the university because he also faces hateful statements for being an alumnus.
"People seem to forget we're human. In a way it's sad that people are so quick to rush to judgment," he said.
So quietly, they weather the storm.