COMMENTARY: My Brush with Bob Jones University

c. 2000 Religion News Service (Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS.) (UNDATED) I was almost a student at Bob Jones University. As the turbulent 1960s gave way to the uncertain 1970s, I began to look at colleges. My father, meanwhile, was taking a hard look at me. My sweater and skirt sets had been […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS.)

(UNDATED) I was almost a student at Bob Jones University.


As the turbulent 1960s gave way to the uncertain 1970s, I began to look at colleges. My father, meanwhile, was taking a hard look at me.

My sweater and skirt sets had been abandoned for torn blue jeans and logoed T-shirts. When I did wear skirts they were so short sitting down became a challenge.

Middle-class girls from good families were going off to college and becoming crazed bombers or orgy-loving drug addicts.

I realize now my father was scared. So scared he did the Protestant equivalent of threatening to send me to a convent. “Bob Jones University is just what you need,” he declared one day.

Of course I thought he was kidding. Even 30 years ago Bob Jones University was as far as you could get from popular culture.

But then came the fateful day when I found the BJU catalog and application in the mail. He was serious. I was desperate.

I locked myself in my room and turned my Deep Purple album up. “Go ahead,” my father said at my door. “You won’t be taking that music to BJU.”

As I began to read the information it became clear that life as I knew it would be over if I went to this bastion of conservatism. No rock music, dancing, movies or television. Dates were chaperoned and regulated by the school. Guys couldn’t even walk girls to class _ they had separate sidewalks.

None of these rules fazed my father. In his mind it was just what I needed to straighten out. Then I found the information about “Negroes.” At that point in time, BJU did not let blacks in at all. Despite the fact that the country talked more about civil rights than it was practiced, such obvious discrimination was shocking.


I showed my father the information and he read it over twice. Then he closed the catalog and said deliberately, “I guess you won’t be going to that school.” I tried not to look too thrilled as I went back to my room.

A few years later BJU began to admit blacks but did not allow them to date whites. They still maintain this position which is why they receive no federal funding and are not even tax-exempt. It’s a high price to pay for their policy, but it does not appear to be changing.

Bob Jones University is what it is. It doesn’t pretend to be inclusive and the school makes its policies absolutely clear. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to go there. Neither does a penny of one of our tax dollars go to support the school.

The school represents a dimension of the American experience. That may be upsetting to most. But it has every right to exist.

George W. Bush made a choice to visit the school knowing exactly what it was. It is not an institution that is shy about its views. For him to now say he wishes he had “educated” his audience is absurd. The folks at BJU are not waiting to be educated about blacks, Catholics or rock musicians. They know precisely what they believe and have shown no signs of moderating from those views.

If Bush did not embrace those views he shouldn’t have made it a stop on the campaign. But neither should Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., have introduced a Senate resolution condemning the school. Since when is Congress in the business of slapping around private institutions that receive absolutely no federal benefits?


Bob Jones University attracts a certain group of people. It doesn’t attract me, but I do believe it has the right to exist. Candidates should not pander to its population and then discount it; Congress shouldn’t get into the dangerous practice of passing resolutions about private, tax-paying groups.

My father made the right choice 30 years ago. George W. Bush should have done the same.

DEA END BOURKE

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