New York Times Story on BJU

[North Carolina Tentmaker]

Love em or hate em I know board members have strong feelings about Bob Jones University. This New York Times article is typical of medea coverage with a misleading headline.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/education/christian-school-faulted-for-halting-abuse-study.html

Christian School Faulted for Halting Abuse Study

You have to get pretty deep in the article before you can see that there is no accusation of abuse on campus, the "study" was in how the school handles and counsels students who come forward with abuse claims from before they were enrolled. And the study is not cancelled, just stoped and on hold for the moment. The university intends to complete the study, although it may be with a different consulting firm.

 

[Earth Wind and Fire]

JEEZE I'm torn....I hate that biased liberal rag but I really hate BJU for how they handeled my nephew who was abused. Maybe I will go out and kick the Dog:laugh:

 

[North Carolina Tentmaker]

Now we would not want to enrage PETA.

Although my wife is an alum I am not a huge BJU fan, but from reading the article, and I have no other information about this, but from the article it looks like BJU is doing the right thing and getting out in front of any potential problems. With thousands of students and hundreds of staff you know abuse will a some point take place, and you have students who were abused before they arrive. Having a policy and procedure to deal with that is the right thing to do. Now what are the details of that policy?

I of course no nothing about what happened to your nephew EWF, but it sounds like BJU needs to revise their policy.

It is not an easy task, you want to protect the innocent and hold the guilty accountable, but you don't want to allow false accusers either.

 

[Jerome]

article:

the university hired a Christian consulting group in 2012 to investigate its handling of sexual assaults, many of which occurred long before the students arrived at the university.

NCT's characterization of article:

there is no accusation of abuse on campus, the "study" was in how the school handles and counsels students who come forward with abuse claims from before they were enrolled.

Huh? Many means all to you? Bizarre.

 

[North Carolina Tentmaker]

I guess I should have said there was no accusation of specific abuse on campus, and there is not, other than the mention of an incident from the 90's

Huh? Many means all to you? Bizarre.

No, Many means Many. While there is mention in the article about an incident involving a staff member in the 90's, the study is not about abuse on campus but on how the university treats victoms of abuse. I am not saying that abuse does not or could not happen, exactly the opposite, with the size of the campus I am sure they have and will in the future. From the article:

many of which occurred long before the students arrived at the university.

Meaning many occured long before the students arrived. The clear implication reading the article is that many of the abuses occured to the students when they were young children, long before they arrived at BJU. Other incidents might have occured more recently, within a few years of them arriving. Not ruling out the possibility that some could occurr to current students or staff.

Since some of you may not be able to follow the link or don't what to read the entire story, here are some highlights:

On Friday, Stephen Jones, president of the university and great-grandson of its founder, addressed students and employees, saying, “We grew concerned that in the process, Grace had begun going beyond the originally outlined intentions,” but he would not elaborate. He said the university had not told Grace what its concerns were and wanted to discuss them with the consultant but could do so only face to face and felt compelled to fire the firm first.

“We terminated our agreement with Grace so that we could sit down and get it back on track,” Mr. Jones said, vowing to complete the investigation, with or without Grace. [emphasis added]

. . .

the university, with about 4,000 students and an affiliated primary and secondary school, is having no ordinary version of the conflicts that have rocked colleges around the country over their treatment of claims of sexual assault.

. . .

at Bob Jones, most of the stories that have been made public do not involve assaults on campus. They are about people who were abused as children and then looked for help in college.

. . .

Mr. Jones said that the university began the investigation not because of any particular allegations, but because of the trouble it had seen at other schools

Sounds like a pretty responsible position for the college to me.