Clone of A Prodigal Sheep

Following pressure from unnamed sponsors, the university ordered the online edition taken down and instituted a new requirement that future print issues be reviewed and approved by faculty prior to publication.

According to the newspaper's student editors, they 'were told they would face disciplinary action unless they agreed to let administration remove anything in the newspaper that would "shed North Central in a negative light"'. One of the editors, Hope Bahr, posted the following in her blog last week:

I have not taken a stand in the past when administration or those in power above me have, in my opinion, violated their role as the trustees of our education by censoring the Northern Light. They have controlled content regarding to Soulforce by either forcing us to not cover events surrounding it by canceling the printing of the paper or requiring us to run the articles through a member of administration prior to publication.

I cannot in good conscience keep silent about this violation of journalistic ethics, principles and thwarting of the journalism students' educations. The stance and actions the school is taking is harming our education. While I love this school and have paid thousands of dollars to earn a degree from here, my heart aches at what is happening here. I am saddened, disillusioned and angry that I have to ask my staff to compromise their ethics, morals and standards to get a degree. The very ethics, morals and standards that are taught in journalism classes are not being encouraged and enforced when it comes down to their practical and real-world use ... producing a newspaper.

I read both of the offending articles. The piece on Soulforce was somewhat long and in need of judicious editing, but hardly painted the school in a negative light. If anything, by printing Jake Reitan's responses to questions verbatim and at length it may have helped to reinforce some readers' views that Soulforce is a 'radical' organization with a radical agenda and that North Central has a legitimate interest in keeping the riders off campus.

The op-ed piece on tongues was poorly written and not worthy of comment except that it attacked one of Pentecostalism's sacred cows (which I guess must be as worthy of condemnation as giving column space to someone who disagrees with the church's teaching on sexuality).

North Central's administration exhibits a blatant, but unsurprising, lack of trust in students to find their own way toward the truth. Unlike Notre Dame's recognition that discussions can advance in a framework of free speech and expression, the Assemblies of God and its educational institutions seem to recognize no such possibility. The school obviously believes that its educational mission requires control of students' thinking and reading rather than open dialogue and discussion.

I think this reflects the inability of the Assemblies and most other fundamentalist groups to engage with students in the 'marketplace of ideas', and the relative flimsiness of their doctrinal and moral teachings. To borrow from Samuel Johnson's famous statement, censorship must surely be the last refuge of the moral and intellectual coward.

Hope Bahr is quite right in pointing out that the school's actions contradict the very values and ethics students are expected to learn in an academic environment. However, my (and other people's) experiences of Pentecostal college environments is that such contradictions are the norm and not the exception.