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SEWANEE: The Episcopal University Loses Alumni Support

SEWANEE: THE EPISCOPAL UNIVERSITY LOSES ALUMNI SUPPORT
Liberalizing and Pro-Homosexual Trends Cited in Alumni Revolt

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
7/19/2007

The University of the South at Sewanee faces an angered alumni body and has hired a new director of marketing and communications experienced in "crisis management" to jump-start its failed public relations.

"The homosexual agenda that is fracturing the Episcopal Church has come home to roost at the Episcopal University," one source on the mountain told VirtueOnline.

Based on a review of Sewanee's annual fund website, VirtueOnline investigations have discovered that fundraisers missed their alumni giving percentage goal by 10%. In a loud vote of no confidence, 60% of Sewanee's alumni did not give.

Conservative alumni have revolted against the liberal trends of the Episcopal Church's only university with a clear majority finding good reasons not to give to their dear old alma mater.

"The faculty here at Sewanee keeps giving them plenty of good reasons not to give. Sewanee has gone over the cliff of hardcore feminist multiculturalism and pro-homosexual liberalism. Every deviancy of the Episcopal Church is now embraced and celebrated in Sewanee. Most alumni have decided that their money will no longer pay for the perversions," VirtueOnline was told. "We think we have a problem now, but what happens when the students go home and tell their parents what they are learning in the classroom? How do we explain to parents the meaning of the "Diversity is our Strength" flyers on the professors' office doors when everyone knows that the Episcopal diversity is divisive and destructive? What self-respecting parent would pay next year's massive tuition bill just to get more of that? That's our future crisis."

And a crisis it should be. Why would parents pay $160,000 over four years just to get at Sewanee what they can get for free in any revisionist Episcopal Church just by forcing their children to sit through one more droning, whining sermon? VirtueOnline was the first to report last year that a gang of 18 of Sewanee's once celebrated faculty proposed that the Christian faith be removed from the University's purpose statement (http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4055).

That wasn't the first wakeup call for alumni. The alarm has sounded many times, but perhaps not ever as loudly as now. The 28 Southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church own Sewanee. As these fracture over the loss of the received faith among the priestly caste and its replacement by the anti faith, Sewanee is bound to suffer even more. A few years ago, the University of the South agreed to change its name to Sewanee: the University of the South for the sake of inclusive multiculturalism, which is another euphemism for "the inclusive church," which means nothing is a sin anymore except homophobia and white privilege. The alumni finally woke up and started taking a closer look at what their money was paying for.

The 60% no confidence vote means they obviously don't like what they find. Unlike the 40%, the 60% do not have to worry about where their money goes:

GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) founded in 1988 to provide a setting for confidential and frank discussion concerning human sexuality. Its goal is to dispel stereotypes about sexual orientation by building community and providing education.

B-Glad Sewanee welcomes students of all sexual orientations (including gay, straight, lesbian, and bisexual). Homecoming: 4 - 6 p.m. Rainbow Ribbon Society Reception at the home of Tam Parker on Bobtown Circle.

The Women's Studies Department, which has long been known as a recruitment and training camp for Sewanee's many sullen, unfeminine feminists- (Women's Studies 111 --. Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies -- A survey of the history, politics, culture, psychology, biology and literature of LGBT people. Readings and lectures focusing on works by and about LGBT people. http://www.sewanee.edu/womensstudies)

The Magnificent 60% have a clean conscience. Their money did not pay for a visit to the mountain by apostate homosexual Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson when he spoke on a recruitment mission to Sewanee; Nor will their money help pay for the Sewanee website that makes his heresy available to the whole world, marketed under the new "Sewanee: The University of the South" brand name (http://www2.sewanee.edu/communications/news?id=16452) Robinson was invited to campus in April by the Gay/Straight Alliance, a student organization, as the keynote speaker for a two-day Southeastern College Summit for Human Equality. The event billed itself as "a forum for communication, networking and discussion about the college-level gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) movement." Over 350 attended the occasion.

Robinson pitched his talk explaining his own concept of God and God's love as it related to his life and the controversy, saying "this is about God's unbelievable expansiveness and inexhaustible love for all God's children... this will not be over until all God's children are welcome at the table." He addressed previous controversies in the church and society including the ordination of women and the civil rights struggles, seeing the current conflict as another step along the same path. At no time did he question the morality of his behavior and its unacceptability to the vast majority of the Anglican Communion.

A number of faculty, students and alumni felt that Robinson's appearance was a tacit endorsement by the university of pan sexuality - a position now officially recognized and accepted by the Episcopal Church.

Most are predicting that he will get his honorary degree from Sewanee, especially now that one of the homosexual agenda's bishops is on Sewanee's board of regents. The regents approve honorary degree recipients. VirtueOnline predicts that when Robsion is awarded an honorary degree by Sewanee's regents that the 60% who do not give now will be joined by at least another automatic 10-15%, pushing the no confidence vote to almost 75%. Never would a decision not to give money be more proper than that.

Costs to attend the university have also risen. Salaries of the faculty and administrative costs to attend Sewanee is now in excess of $39,000, not including expensive car, insurance fraternity, sorority, beer, fashion clothes, pearl necklaces, and entertainment travel. The following fees have been established for the 2007-2008 academic year: 2007-2008 Tuition and Fees

* Tuition: $30,438
* Fees: $222
* Room & Board: $8,780
* Total: $39,440

(http://admission.sewanee.edu/financial_aid) Tuition and fees cover only about two-thirds of the real cost of a Sewanee education. Gifts from alumni, foundations, and friends, and the income from endowment provide each student with a hidden scholarship of more than $5,000 per year.

Students without adequate health insurance coverage may not be allowed to register for classes. A student medical insurance plan offered through an independent insurer is available for students who do not already have adequate health insurance. The Dean of Students sends information about the insurance plan to all students before the beginning of each school year. Students who qualify may receive scholarships, grants, loans, and work based upon a system of aid allocation.

A common refrain on the mountain now states the obvious: "The costs will continue to rise, making it harder for the university to bring in multiculturals on scholarships, which means the financial backlash against the homosexual agenda at Sewanee will hurt Sewanee's chances of seeing fewer whites in the name of diversity. Seeing the face of God in the classroom may become just too expensive."

"We want it all, and can't have it, and the bitterness here will blame the Magnificent 60% by labeling them with worst damnation left in Episcobabble: "fundamentalist conservative homophobic racists," VirtueOnline was told during its investigations.

The university recently joined with a group of colleges who are considering pulling out of reporting to US News & World Reports for their annual rankings. Sewanee was #25 in the year 2000, but has dropped to 34 and seems permanently relegated to the less respectable position. "Since we can't feel the way we want to feel about ourselves by being in top 25 ever again, we'll just quit," said a source on the mountain. Plummeting alumni giving hurts their chances of ever getting back into the top 25.

Sewanee has become a lesson. As reported by Accuracy in Academia, Sewanee became politically corrected. Their investigation revealed the plan: "'In 20 years you won't know the place," Mary Maples Dunn gushed to Sewanee's Board of Trustees in 1998. She outlined for them exactly what she had in mind. '" (http://www.campusreportonline.net/main/articles.php?id=90)

Through anecdote and observation, everyone knows that most of Sewanee's alumni are from conservative families in the South. They deeply resent the tinkerings and tweekings that have changed the mountain by replacing its received wisdom with a new agenda. They refuse to pay for what Dunn wants.

The lesson is a painfully obvious one. The Episcopal Church has become so warped by the rejection of traditional Christianity that its flagship Episcopal University is twisted up in the same errors. What was once good is now bad, and what was once bad is now good. Supporting one's alma mater would normally be thought of as a good thing. Now it means giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Sewanee is celebrating its 150th anniversary while it sports a black eye from the majority of alumni who are disgusted with how wrong things are on the mountain. The founders and sustainers of Sewanee deserved much better than this.

While traditional Christians are fleeing with their children and their money from the spiritual and moral dangers in Episcopal churches, so are alumni fleeing from any implied obligation to give back to Sewanee. The Sewanee of today and of the future is not their Sewanee, so it will no longer get their money. When will it stop getting their children?

END

VOL FOOTNOTE: I have been informed that Sewanee did attain its financial goal but not from the majority of alumni. The substance of the article that Sewanee University is going in a direction that most of the alumni do not support, has not changed.

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