Five Initiatives for CIU
April 25th, 2007Five Initiatives for CIU
On Wednesday, March 28, Bill Jones presented five initiatives with ten objectives that Columbia International University will be pursuing. Please send TPP a sound off and let us know what you think of these initiatives.
1. Enhancing campus life for our students
-Study and improve housing conditions and suggest additional options (unless building new dorm)
-Increase amenities such as Internet, and electrical capacity in dorms
-Present a proposal to the Board to consider NCCAA II athletics
2. Clarifying how Spiritual Life will be formed in all delivery systems.
-Main campus & other delivery systems
3. Strengthening our academic offerings
- Launch the Business & Organizational Leadership Program in the undergrad
-Inaugurate the Center for Christian School Education
4. Expanding our delivery venues -Provide initial offering of an online M.Ed.
-Provide initial offering of an online M.A. Missions
-Add another location
5. Reaching and maintaining 1000 headcount with 400 new students
- REAL Marketing (regions, events, alumni, leveraged partnerships) with focus on undergrad and graduate programs by discipline
it seems like the students want to revisit the standards (per the TPP survey), but these don’t include that issue - I’m curious??
..or maybe that is included in number 2?
The physical expression standard was revised shortly before the announcement of the initiatives. Couples casually dating are under the original standard of only being allowed to hug, more ’serious’ couples (couples ‘asking the marriage question’) may hold hands and briefly kiss off campus, engaged couples may hold hands and briefly kiss on campus as well as off.
Personally, I would like to see the attitudes behind the standards change, for more than just the physical expression standard. Instead of no R rated movies for example being allowed to make an informed decision on my own, as I grow in Christ. Basically, more grace and allowance for growth and less legalistic rules. Other students I know share similar views; I hope that standards will be looked at under number 2 of the initiatives but nothing has specifically indicated this.
Thanks for your comments!
Elizabeth
Agreed, the whole attitude is somewhat misguided. The problem with the standards is largely conceptual rather than specific.
Take movies, for example: The problem is not that R-rated movies aren’t allowed, the problem is that any nebulous category of movies is disallowed. This is a pretty basic fallacy. Is a kind of movie racism; “because some Arabs and Irish are terrorists, all Arabs and Irish should be avoided.”
The problem isn’t that kissing on campus was disallowed, it’s that physical morality decisions in a relationship are reduced to a legal/forensic question, while the emotional and spiritual remain unaddressed. This is because the standards-makers (rightly, gnerally) believe they cannot control the emotional and spiritual, and must content themselves with the outward physical. The problem is they can’t control anyone. It’s illusory. People who are immoral, or worse amoral, will not be made moral by the standards. They shouldn’t legislate any of that.
Wow that was an incoherent paragraph. The point is that the school should teach and exemplify morality rather than trying to legislate it. Mankind has been trying to make people better for millennia. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.
Anyway, an interesting quote in the vein. On taking the presidency of Washington(-Lee) University, R.E. Lee was asked to look over their school’s honor code and suggest any modifications. After a day’s consideration, he returned this to the board of trustees: “Gentlemen, I only have one change to make to the honor code, and that is this: throw it out completely. Replace it with this sentence: ‘While at Washington University, our students will conduct themselves as Christian gentlemen.’”
That is an amazing quote. Thanks for the comments, Mark.
-Elizabeth