I think that’s a common dynamic at academic institutions. Administration is typically controlled by a board made up of alumni age 40-80 whereas profs are typically 30-60 and students 18-25, so the admin is several decades more conservative than the profs who are several decades more conservative than students.

Also in referring to the Community Covenant: The main goal of establishing the Covenant is to create a list of standards for community life. Upon brief examination of the covenant, one finds standards including “to cultivate a campus atmosphere that encourages spiritual, moral and intellectual growth”, upholding one another, respect of property and life, and demonstration of “love, joy, peace, patience” among other virtues. The covenant condemns lying, hypocrisy and self-righteousness. I find it refreshing that an institution upholds such behaviors that should be common courtesy. My friends at other Universities are finding that their fellow students have a complete disregard for some of these values. While the covenant does forbid smoking, drinking and homosexual behavior, it nowhere says that homosexuality is a crime or will send someone directly to hell.
In my experience, people often see what Wheaton College forbids rather than the standards that Wheaton upholds. The community covenant that all Wheaton students, faculty and staff (yes that includes maintenance staff and cafeteria workers) sign and uphold can be found here: http://wheaton.edu/welcome/aboutus_community.html

About our qualifications as a Liberal Arts Institution (NOT BIBLE COLLEGE):

We are accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, a secular group.

US News and World Report ranks us as the number 56 liberal arts college in the country.
Princeton Review includes us in the 371 best colleges
We are one of only 40 schools included in Loren Pope’s Colleges that Change lives
60% of the class of 2013 graduated in the top 10% of their high school class.
Right after graduation, 60% of alums get jobs, 27% are enrolled in a graduate school, 2% join the military and 11% go on other paths (including missions, Peace Corps etc…)

I hope that my insight has proven useful.

As a final note, it was my experience that there is a keen difference between Wheaton’s administration (which is what your article here is primarily critiquing; and whose views tend to be much narrower) and its professors and students (who tend to have much broader views). And it’s a norm for students (myself included) to enter Wheaton with a much narrower and very conservative worldview due to the families and communities we were raised in, but to leave Wheaton with much more liberal – or at least more moderate and nuanced – views.

This was exactly my experience at ORU as well.

ORU’s administration was disliked and generally distrusted by many students and professors during my time there in the 1980s. Case in point: the ORU administration was notorious for canceling concerts at the last minute if they didn’t like the look of the performers, so when the Christian punk band Undercover came to play during my senior year, we had a network of students keep tabs on the whereabouts of the Dean of Men, who was notoriously judgmental and homophobic. They made sure he was always on the opposite side of the campus relative to guitarist Gym Nicholson, who had pretty wild-looking hair, which the administration insisted on retouching in a photograph in the student newspaper so not to offend the delicate sensibilities of Oral Roberts’ long-time financial supporters.

While the ORU campus was definitely a conservative atmosphere, there were several professors who were much more progressive. One even later attended a friend of mine’s gay commitment ceremony at the risk of his job, and when the administration demanded student counselors to reveal private conversations if any “Honor Code” violations were expressed, many counselors quietly refused, and some resigned.

The ultimate irony is that my progressive shift on a number of theological positions was a direct result of my ORU experience. It doesn’t surprise me that Wheaton’s environment is similar. Whenever you have an overriding cultural mindset into which people feel forced to acquiesce, you will get pushback–especially in an academic environment, where the purpose of education is to evaluate all points of view.

Wheaton is a liberal arts college which highly values its identity as such. It is not a “Bible college.” It does require students in all disciplines to take a minimal level of biblical studies and theology courses, but these are nowhere near the 48-51 credit hours mentioned in the previous post.

When I was at Wheaton (2002-2006), most students not majoring in Bible/Theology were required to take 14 hours (4 classes – one per year) in that department. We were certainly required to take far more “gen ed” hours in the humanities than in Bible/Theology. Of course many students may choose to take additional Bible/Theology courses as electives, however.

I haven’t looked into the academic requirements at Bible colleges, or any other Christian colleges or universities, so I can’t vouch for them – perhaps they do require an unusually large number of Bible credits. But I believe there is quite a difference between the academic philosophies of liberal arts colleges such as Wheaton and schools who define themselves specifically as Bible colleges (and who therefore may require more classes in Bible/Theology).

Also, while I have not (yet) gone to graduate school, I have many, many Wheaton classmates who have gone on to study at prestigious universities, including a number at Ivy League institutions. I have not known a Wheaton degree to be a severe impediment to their acceptance at any of these institutions. Again, there may be a difference in this regard between a degree from an academically rigorous liberal arts college like Wheaton and a smaller or less rigorous Bible college; and it may depend on the academic discipline being pursued.

As a final note, it was my experience that there is a keen difference between Wheaton’s administration (which is what your article here is primarily critiquing; and whose views tend to be much narrower) and its professors and students (who tend to have much broader views). And it’s a norm for students (myself included) to enter Wheaton with a much narrower and very conservative worldview due to the families and communities we were raised in, but to leave Wheaton with much more liberal – or at least more moderate and nuanced – views.

Again, my comments are specific to Wheaton, as was the original article, and I do not purport to reflect trends or realities on other Christian college campuses. I am only concerned that Wheaton is presented accurately.

How they are accredited I will never know.

They created their own accredidation agency – it is bogus, but their students don’t find that out until they graduate and try to get into grad school or get a job.

http://www.tracs.org/

Just as a note, the funny thing about this issue with Wheaton is that among more conservative schools and Bible colleges, Wheaton is seen as a liberal sell-out!! That gives you a little insight as to how backwards these more conservative schools are. How they are accredited I will never know.

This reminds me of a visit to the dentist at about age 14. The dentist was a fundamentalist Christian, and he was discussing my soon to be removed wisdom teeth. He was explaining why they don’t often come in correctly, are often stunted, etc, and then remarked that “they tell us that’s because of evolution.” He said it with a mixture of humor and light contempt. I suppose that is one of those areas where it would make little difference what one’s understanding of Genesis was.

On the other hand, we should remember these issues when someone (with ADF in the lead no doubt) brings suit against a school for “not respecting their beliefs” by insisting that they answer correctly when tested on material that requires answers that don’t include Adam and Eve. It seems to me that the creation account is meant to convey that God is the maker of everything, not a detailed dissertation on how He did it.

That’s a good question. Surely there’s not a satisfactory answer. My response is something along the lines of “Because they don’t think too hard about it.” But you can learn a lot of facts without knowing their origin. Take genetics. Before genes we even discovered, we knew a lot about them without knowing their origins. Similarly, a creationist is perfectly capable of isolating and splicing genes. She doesn’t need to know where they came from, just what’s in front of her. In computers, this is called a layer of abstraction. I work with computers all day yet there’s much I don’t understand about their origins and fundamentals. That didn’t bother my boss when he hired me because was correct that it wouldn’t affect my job performance (much). Me and the geneticist would have a greater appreciation and better skills by knowing more, but there’s still plenty we can do only knowing part of the picture. Sometimes that’s not enough. Sometimes it is.