COLLEGE AVENUE: Dodging the Multicultural Bullet

...Last summer our administration appointed a special IB ~'~ committee to draft a Strategic Plan" (SP) for our i ~institution, which until recently was overseen by ~ ~ the Church of the Brethren...

...A reference in the plan to fostering "relationship-centered education" upset faculty and students alike because of its implied or imagined denial of individual and departmental interests...

...This generalization, I should point out, applies to the entire Pennsylvania Dutch social world, and not only to the Brethren, who by now have little influence at the college...

...Both faculty and students also observed that the SP's values are not appropriate for college learning, which should be stressing critical thinking rather than sensitivity to diversity...

...And now we are reconsidering an ideological plunge into the dark that our paying customers may not want to take...

...those who have, however, have generally emphasized the probable costs and inconvenience of the proposed social service...

...In an interview I granted to the college newspaper and which appeared on November 3, I warned against a plan that would "strike unavoidably at academic freedom and possibly hurt our recruitment of independent-minded students...

...For example, two professors on campus who lecture and publish on the college's Christian legacy were shocked when I recently wondered aloud whether there might be an inherent tension between Bible-based Christianity and contemporary multiculturalism...

...According to older mission statements, such lives involved Bible-reading and devotion to Christ's example of selfsacrifice, together with the acquisition of vocations, most notably accounting...

...The result is a kind of bucolic democracy, in which the president or professor with whom you have quarreled may meet you in the local supermarket five minutes later...

...Paul Gottfried is the Raffensperger Professor of Huinanities at Elizabethtown College and resides on College Avenue next door to the president...

...FEBRUARY 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 57...

...To make matters worse, a pamphlet showed up in our mailboxes in mid-October, published by Minnesota State University, which listed "101 ways to experience diversity" on a college campus...

...They were farming people, who lived and dressed with austerity, and whose communal traditions went back to the Anabaptists who were forced out of Germany and Switzerland in the 18th century...

...continued on poge 56 54 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 2006 COLLEGE AVENUE Though it is possible that the administration sees its multicultural plan as congruous with the college's religious tradition, some of my colleagues believe that the religious packaging of the SP is merely a ruse, an attempt to sell to the trustees and others something strictly ideological...

...The opponents of the plan were mostly of Italian descent and brought home the importance of cultural differences...

...It was therefore alarming when at the beginning of the fall semester, the Strategic Plan committee announced its very unchristian-looking multicultural plan...

...This (alas) is even true for the professing Christians in this group, who on our faculty could never bring themselves to say the obvious, namely that multiculturalism is not their ancestral faith...

...The faculty-though notified during the summer of its impending release-was completely unprepared for how truly far-reaching the plan was, that the same administration that avoids using the word "Christmas" in announcements of holiday gatherings would be concerned with conforming its new Strategic Plan to the Brethren heritage...

...Despite some notable exceptions, the behavior of the over-50 age group was generally less impressive...

...We are also a private, tuition-driven college, and this brings certain unavoidable consequences...

...Unlike the branch of Penn State in nearby Middletown (Harrisburg), we are not under the thumb of far-off bureaucrats at State College, who can inflict on others their will, including multicultural guidelines...

...Moreover, the overhaul of the teaching requirements would take place without a faculty vote and through the efforts of people who in some cases had no professional competence to make such sweeping changes...

...These entailed bypassing the faculty in the SP's implementation, the plan's all-tooclear ideological thrust, and the incompatibility of the added social service with the content and goals of most of the existing courses at the college...

...But the effect in this case has been to cause the administration to think twice about their clients' academic expectations...

...Among the ways diversity might be nurtured, according to the pamphlet, is by encouraging handholding among students of the same gender, suggesting visits to gay bars, and promoting National Public Radio in class...

...If I were in a foxhole fighting for 56 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 2006 PAUL GOTTFRtED my life, I would pick as comrades those who valued honor-and did not misrepresent timidity as religious virtue...

...My young ally in political science will soon be telling me that she is right, that politics reflect material interest first, second, and always...

...By the first week in November, I learned that the committee was substantially revising its plan and then received a note from the interim dean of faculty asking me whether I would oppose the requirement of a foreign language and the encouragement of students to study abroad to satisfy the multicultural component of the SR I immediately expressed my endorsement of this sensible recommendation...

...A reconstructed Brethren meeting house on the edge of our campus indicates something about the "plain folk" who settled this part of South Central Pennsylvania and in due course founded our college...

...At some point differences have to be amicably resolved because the parties are socially and geographically interconnected...

...Though this mailing might have occurred without administrative assistance, its effect was to deepen suspicion about how far the new directives would go...

...This value instruction would be accompanied by a requirement that students complete 25 hours of mandatory social service during the second semester of their freshman year...

...The faculty-though notified during the summer of its impending release-was completely unprepared for how truly far-reaching the plan was and was totally unaware that it was going to be put into practice without our vote...

...Despite the obvious discrepancy between the SP and the college's mission, the administration and the Director of Multicultural Affairs, whose staff had a hand in devising the plan, argued that the multiculturalist plan highlighted the "Brethren heritage...

...Interests, and often quite narrow ones, have driven the forces that stood up against the SP...

...Most of the faculty and administrators see each other frequently, and this is particularly true for the ones who live in the area...

...There is an advantage to working at a small college of some 1,800 students in an admittedly provincial setting...

...Many at the college indeed believe that multiculturalism is a natural manifestation of the Christian spirit...

...S SOON AS THE STRATEGIC PLAN was unveiled, opposition surfaced...

...For if there is something that propels this makeshift coalition beyond the fight for turf, I have yet to discover it...

...Self-proclaimed conservatives and Christians (although they both exist on campus) have not exactly rushed to the frontlines...

...The proposed education, as revealed in the SP document of 16 pages, seems unlikely to attract students who are looking for professional training or some kind of liberal arts curriculum...

...The defenders of academic freedom, among whom I number myself, have opportunistically appealed to this me-centeredness in order to expand their alliance...

...HIS ENTIRE INCIDENT ALSO CONFIRMS a sociological observation I first made Those _L from the surrounding Pennsylvania Dutch years ago...

...Certainly it is difficult to believe As soon as the Strategic Plan was unveiled, opposition surfaced...

...Additional complaints came from the student body about the imposition of an education in political values that neither they nor their parents had wanted when they chose our college...

...Many of them seemed primarily focused on retirement plans or staying out of harm's way...

...My warnings and those of others did not fall on deaf ears...

...We are also concerned about the desires of students and their parents, usually to an inordinate degree...

...In communications among the faculty and from the faculty to the president, provost, and interim dean of faculty, certain complaints kept surfacing...

...Both of them helped keep the pot boiling with frequent communications outlining the arguments against the SP and by sticking out their necks at faculty meetings...

...This group of abstemious and pacificistic German Pietists, who combined aversion to war with an emphasis on hard work and plain living, created Elizabethtown College in 1899 for teaching "lives of service" to the community...

...Those who stood in the forefront of the opposition to the SP were younger faculty, notably a gutsy, untenured female colleague in political science and an associate professor of psychology...

...But for the time being, it looks like we are winning, which maybe what counts...

...With the notable exception of the social work department, the support among the faculty for the SP was and is minimal...

...They are raised to accept a consensus that often does not exist but which they associate with those placed above them...

...There are two aspects of this struggle for academic freedom and integrity that warrant further comment...

...Spoiling even the appearance of agreement goes against the fiber of their being and has been historically considered a sign of sinful pride...

...Though less than 2 percent of the current student body and an even lower percentage of the faculty at Elizabethtown belong to the Brethren denomination, the college's religious heritage is nonetheless a crucial part of its identity...

...The SP mandates the teaching of tolerance and other multicultural "values" in all programs and courses...

...culture do poorly in standing up to authority...

...The decisive factors in this battle have not been ideological...