by Bria Isaacson, Copy Editor
The Asbury Honors Program and Creation Care program—have you ever heard of these initiatives?
Probably not. These are initiatives that were once planned or implemented yet are no longer around. But these are programs that should be around.
Asbury University has a wealth of resources they offer that aid in our overall wellbeing—resources ranging from women’s sexual wholeness groups and sermons through RightNow Media to workshops through the Center for Academic Excellence and the start of the Joe Pitts Center for Public Policy.
These are only a few of the great resources that Asbury offers us and that are well-known throughout campus. However, Asbury needs to expand its resources to better fit its mission and goals, and honestly, Asbury needs to better market and push the current resources it has.
In Asbury’s 2012-2017 Strategic Plan, faculty, staff, administration and students revealed that communication was a weakness across campus.
While I was not at Asbury in 2012 to judge whether our level of communication has improved, I am writing this to say that our level of communication is still not where it should be.
One impediment to achieving the desired level of communication is the inefficiency of our university website. Though Asbury has fixed several aspects of the website which were once listed as weaknesses in the 2012-2017 Strategic Plan, there are still web pages and links that are outdated and hard to find.
A section of the student development policies page was last updated in 1997 and lists the contact as the “Dean of Women,” a position that is no longer relevant to us in 2018. Many of the policies were last updated in the 1990s. Other issues, such as not linking PDFs to the website search bar, contribute to the inefficiency of our website.
This is not the only impediment, as some Asbury resources, such as Title IX and the sexual misconduct policy, are solely available through the website and not anywhere on campus, as far as I know. Information on such a serious topic should be widely dispersed, from posters and brochures in buildings to campus emails each semester.
Other resources that we have but have not publicized well are chapel initiative proposals, a form that allows for chapel suggestions; mentoring coaches, which are available upon request sent to Jeannie Banter; and weekly devotions on Asbury’s website. How many great programs are going unused because of a mere lack of communication?
Perhaps this is why the Asbury Honors Program, an item in the 2012-2017 Strategic Plan, and the Creation Care program, a program tied to the Cornerstone Project’s Stewardship goal, are no longer with us. These could be valuable permanent additions to campus, and I would like information concerning them to be widely available.
In addition, many students are frustrated with the lack of diversity, and the administration’s silence and inaction on the issue represents apathy to many.
Yet, Asbury is not apathetic, but is often working behind the scenes. Acknowledging the effort and communicating with the student body fights the image of apathy. Even acknowledging the issue shows students they are being heard.
However, there are still many resources that Asbury needs to better fulfill its goals.
Interviews for the 2012-2017 Strategic Plan show that there was a threat to campus relations regarding the “perception of bias against other denominations,” and much of this still exists. Several of my friends left Asbury because they were Catholics and felt bullied and unwelcome on this campus.
For a Christian campus that, according to Asbury’s website, claims to be “multi-denominational,” this is unacceptable, and it is the fault of students, faculty and administration.
There are several changes we can make to fight this. We can hire professors from multiple backgrounds and denominations, we can highlight the professors we currently have and their diverse backgrounds—religious, political, ethnic backgrounds—in a faculty spotlight and we can host seminars or panels that seek to explore different denominations in a way that balances the bias in our community.
These action items would also aid students in discovering their denomination. Senior Faith Neece, who grew up in a “strict Presbyterian church,” has visited Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, Mennonite and Episcopalian churches while here. She said it was challenging to find her denomination, because Christian Theology class only talked about Calvinism versus Arminianism.
Asbury needs to focus on cultivating diversity: denominational diversity, racial and ethnic diversity and diversity of thought. This entails highlighting various worldviews, and this means administration, faculty and students need to embrace diversity instead of shutting it down directly or indirectly.
An article highlighting Asbury’s diversity—“global and ethnic diversity,” “viewpoint diversity” and “vocation diversity”—in the spring 2018 edition of the alumni magazine The Ambassador reported on four students with different perspectives, yet shied away from announcing that sophomore Meg Hull, the vice president of Asbury’s RISE: Faith and Feminism club, was a feminist, instead saying she advocates for “women’s rights.” This comes after the writer specifically emailed several RISE cabinet members precisely because they were feminists.
RISE has since been asked to stop using the word “feminism” on campus. Hull said she was frustrated by this, “because I feel like we were held up as an example of Asbury’s tolerance and then immediately told not to make the school look bad. It’s unreasonable to claim to be proud of our presence [at Asbury] and then act ashamed of us.”
We cannot embrace diversity while shutting down diversity we do not like. To welcome diversity is to create a campus welcome to all: LGBTQ students, feminist students, atheist students, liberal students included.
To fight this, Asbury could create a women’s resource center, as many campuses have, for resources on sexual education, health, pregnancy and family, or a sex education center for education and sexual support groups. Either of these centers would broaden horizons and could reach out to some of the groups that are often isolated here.
Although Asbury cannot finance each suggestion immediately, administration should take these and other student suggestions seriously. We have bought into Asbury, and we deserve to know the specifics of strategic plans, Board of Trustees meetings and committee decisions that will affect us directly or indirectly. As Hull said, “We are accountable to you [Asbury], but you are not accountable to us.”
Administration should consider expanding avenues of communication in order to accomplish this. A meeting open to students, faculty and administration, perhaps modeled after town hall meetings, would be a great start.
To students, I am sure that this is an incomplete list of suggestions and praise for Asbury. So, write to The Collegian and include your praise, or gaps you see in Asbury’s funding, communication and resources. Engage with Asbury students and administration, especially by speaking with ASC reps and student development. Use the resources and attend the events. Finally, hold Asbury to the high standards they have set for us, for academic excellence and spiritual vitality, for unity and diversity, for communication.
For more suggestions and to add your own, see The Collegian’s website.
