The top story on the front page of today's Charlotte Observer featured a half-page photo of Davidson College's picturesque Chambers building. Unfortunately, the ensuing story concerned news that is not so good for the college. Davidson's biggest donor, John Belk, the retired head of the well-known Belk department chain and former Charlotte mayor, recently resigned from the Board of Trustees after a recent change in college policy that now allows non-Christians on the board.
As the Observer makes clear, "When you lose John Belk, it's the equivalent of James B. Duke walking away from Duke University, or John Morehead walking away from the University of North Carolina." As far as I'm concerned, this is bad news. Despite a majority of liberal faculty and students who claim the policy change to be normatively appropriate (if I can go as far to say that liberals would ever make a moral claim these days), I just can't get around the harm that this loss might bring on the college in the next few years.
The argument goes that Davidson cannot maintain its elite academic top-10 status with such exclusive religious ties among the board of trustees. I'm not so sure. Why does intellectual rigor and academic prestige have to always include an overwhelming majority of liberalness both in terms of faculty and students? And why do liberals always feel so inclined to absolve themselves and their institutions from any sort of religious ties whatsoever?
Davidson's academic side has been well separated from the official ties to the Presbyterian church for decades now. For all intensive purposes, religion involvement and overall religious interest at Davidson is voluntary. Much of our faculty is liberal and, not surprisingly, a minimum of faculty would probably describe themselves as practicing Christians. Substantively, religion has little influence on the academic side of this college.
But I'm still trying to convince myself that opening up the board of trustees to non-Christians for the first time in 140 years is worth losing the support from our biggest and most respected donors. Will short-term pains lead to long-term gains? That is the argument, but I'm not completely sold on it yet.
The loss of both John Belk and Steve Smith is certainly a great loss to Davidson. Both men have served the college well, both financially and with their active support as members of the board. However, I have to disagree with Zach's assertion that their resignation means that the board's decision to allow open itself to non-Christians was not the right decision to make.
First of all, Zach keeps saying that the "liberals" were the ones pushing for this decision, and the "liberals" are the ones who feel a school can't be academically elite without being secular. Both of these claims are false.
This decision was not forced upon the board by the faculty, students or anyone else. They decided of their own will that this was the right time to reexamine this issue. The overwhelming vote by the trustees (31-5 in support of changing the requirement) that was split across all demographics and included the two Presbyterian ministers on the Board shows how this was not some liberal conspiracy, but rather a move the vast majority of Davidson's governing body felt was necessary.
Furthermore, no one is making the argument that Davidson should be a secular school or that in order to be academically elite we must look like other schools. Davidson still believes in the same Christian values on which we were founded and I don't think anyone wants that to change.
What has changed is the previously discriminatory practice that was out of line with the very things this school stands for. Davidson says it is a school that welcomes students of all backgrounds and faiths and we want a free exchange of different ideas and viewpoints. Yet, when this rule was in place, we were not living up to those goals. How would you feel as a Christian is you were accepted to a school that said because of your beliefs you could not serve on the board? Even if you had no intention of ever serving on teh board, that is not the type of environment that seems welcoming to people of other faiths.
As for the the actual implications of these resignations, I don't think it will have quite the effect Zach predicts. While Belk is the College's largest donor, his biggest long term gift (the Belk scholarship, which was recently expanded) will remain unchanged. While the college may have to work a little harder to find some more donors, I don't see our endowement going under because of this decision.
Finally, Zach's argument that the trustees should not have changed the requirement knowing that Belk and others would probably resign and pull their support seems dangerous to me. It is one thing to give large donors preferential treatment or even to listen to their wishes on minor issues. Yet on an issue so fundamental to who we are as a college and what we stand for it is outrageous to say we should simply "follow the money." Davidson, more than most schools, places honor and integrity at the core of its system of values, and to sell out what the vast majority of our students, faculty and most importantly the trustees themselves believe is the right decision for this school simply because a major donor threatens to resign goes against everything this school stands for.
Posted by: Dave | Wednesday, April 13, 2005 at 12:47 AM