Charles: SAU Student Handbook, p. 53 Alcohol and Other Drug Use …Violations …

Comment on La Sierra University Resignation Saga: Stranger-than-Fiction by Professor Kent.

Charles: SAU Student Handbook, p. 53
Alcohol and Other Drug Use
…Violations constitute grounds for disciplinary action, which may include
permanent dismissal.

I have known a handful of individuals who were at Southern Adventist University over the past three decades, including relatives who attended there more recently. Some interesting stories pieced together from emails shared with me the past year:

1. The men’s dean once got an anonymous phone call that 20 or 30 students were in a local bar, so he rounded them up. The Student Association president was among them. Final decision: if the S.A. president resigned, there would be no discipline for him or the other students. Done deal. (Other students were much less fortunate for milder “sins,” such as wearing earrings.) I’m told this was the early 1990s, and that Sean Pitman himself might have been there at the time.

2. The Student Handbook declared that rock music of any type was not tolerated (does it still say this today, Charles?). However, one could eat at two different locations on campus while listening to it, and it was blared loudly at all Student Association functions.

3. Church attendance was not required, but students were kicked out of the dorms on Sabbath mornings. The local theater loved this policy because it filled with SAU students on Saturday mornings, in spite of the fact that theater attendance, according to the handbook, was not permitted.

4. The Handbook said that shorts could not be worn on the campus. Of course, there was never discipline for the many who wore them.

I don’t know of any comparable issues at La Sierra, but there will be discipline inconsistencies on any Christian or secular campus. That’s life. Far as faculty are concerned, I know of colleagues at Christian universities who have had affairs with or even sexually harrassed students. Some with milder offenses were immediately fired. Others with much worse offenses were mildly reprimanded or outright ignored (the latter putting the university at risk of a major lawsuit). Today, California law requires that any university employee in a supervisory position must participate in a sexual harrassment education seminar–a very good idea.

Alcohol was not the real reason these men were forced to resign. If you believe that, I could sell you property adjacent to a nuclear facility in Japan.

Professor Kent Also Commented

La Sierra University Resignation Saga: Stranger-than-Fiction

Martha&#032Kay: I am surprised that no one has called out Prof Kent on what clearly illustrates his intemperance with alcohol as a church employee. THis no doubts explains why he is so eager to support TE’s and homosexual’s and drinker’s in the church. I wonder if his student was drinking alcohol with him. Shame on the prof.

Just now saw this post from Martha Kay. Sadly, her comments exemplify the unfounded conclusions that many EducateTruth supporters reach from just a wee bit of information.

Yes, as touched on in my July 3 post above, it’s true that I consumed alcohol while on a SCUBA trip in Mexican waters with an SDA student–and while I was technically an SDA employee. However, this was nothing more than a sip. My first drink aboard the boat was an apple juice from a large cooler. Upon grabbing another bottle later in the day, I was shocked by the horrible taste with the first swig and spit it into the sink. A number of divers began laughing at me, and asked if I had not realized it was beer. I took a closer look at the label, and someone kindly explained to me that “cerveza” was the Spanish word for “beer.” This was only my second sip ever, both times unaware of what I was drinking. So far as I know, my student at the time had no interest in alcohol either.

Sorry, Martha, but your conclusions, so typical of what I read here at Educate Truth, fall well short of reality.


La Sierra University Resignation Saga: Stranger-than-Fiction
I personally appreciated Dr. Sean Pitman’s frank assessment of the benefits of alcohol consumption at Spectrum (http://tinyurl.com/3vcllj6):

From my own experience as a pathologist I can tell you that those who are heavy alcohol drinkers tend to have very clean arteries at autopsy. They may have had terrible liver disease, horrible diets rich in trans fats, have been very overweight, feeble, and in general poor health, but their coronary arteries and aortas in particular are very clean and healthy looking at autopsy. Given this personal observation, it is fairly easy for me to believe that moderate alcohol consumption may actually reduce overall atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease. Several long-term studies seem to have confirmed this observation. Of course, the risk of alcoholism and the resulting dangers seem to outweigh this particular health benefit for many people. – Sean Pitman

I concur with Sean that there may be benefits to moderate alcohol consumption, but that the risks can also outweigh any benefits. Perhaps Sean imbibes on occasion, but the last sip of alcohol I had was more than a decade ago while on a SCUBA expedition with a student. (Somewhat ironically, I was actually a contract employee that summer with the SDA Church–the last such contract in my career–and my student was also an SDA). Perhaps Sean, leading by example, could declare his complete abstinence from alcohol, and how long it’s been since his last drink.


Recent Comments by Professor Kent

Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
Nic&#032Samojluk: No wonder most creationist writers do not even try to submit their papers to such organizations.
Who wants to waste his/her time trying to enter through a door that is closed to him/her a priori?

You have no idea what you’re writing about, Nic. As it turns out, there are in fact many of us Adventists who “waste” our time publishing articles through doors that open to us a priori. Even Leonard Brand at Loma Linda, a widely recognized creationist, has published in the top geology journals. I mean the top journals in the discipline.

The myth that creationists cannot publish in mainstream science is perpetuated by people who simply do not understand the culture of science–and will remain clueless that they do not understand it even when confronted with their misunderstandings. Such is human nature.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
Pauluc,

Your questions about conservation genetics are very insightful. I don’t understand how all these life forms were able to greatly increase in genetic diversity while simultaneously winding down and losing genetic information to mutations. Sean seems to insist that both processes happen simultaneously. I had the impression he has insisted all along that the former cannot overcome the latter. But I think you must be right: God had to intervene to alter the course of nature. However, we can probably test this empirically because there must be a signature of evidence available in the DNA. I’ll bet Sean can find the evidence for this.

I’m also glad the predators (just 2 of most such species) in the ark had enough clean animals (14 of each such species) to eat during the deluge and in the months and years after they emerged from the ark that they didn’t wipe out the vast majority of animal species through predation. Maybe they all consumed manna while in the ark and during the first few months or years afterward. Perhaps Sean can find in the literature a gene for a single digestive enzyme that is common to all predatory animals, from the lowest invertebrate to the highest vertebrate. Now that would be amazing.

Wait a minute–I remember once being told that SDA biologists like Art Chadwick believe that some animals survived on floating vegetation outside the ark. Now that would solve some of these very real problems! I wonder whether readers here would allow for this possibility. Multiple arks without walls, roof, and human caretakers.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

Ellen White said, “In the days of Noah, men…many times larger than now exist, were buried, and thus preserved as an evidence to later generations that the antediluvians [presumably referring to humans] perished by a flood. God designed that the discovery of these things should establish faith in inspired history…”

Sean Pitman said, “All human fossils discovered so far are Tertiary or post-Flood fossils. There are no known antediluvian human fossils.”

Ellen White tells us that humans and dinosaurs (presumably referred to in the statement, “a class of very large animals which perished at the flood… mammoth animals”) lived together before the flood. Evolutionary biologists tell us that dinosaurs and humans never lived together. You’re telling us, Sean, that the fossil record supports the conclusion of evolutionists rather than that of Ellen White and the SDA Church. Many of the “very large animals which perished at the flood” are found only in fossil deposits prior to or attributed to the flood, whereas hunans occur in fossil deposits only after the flood (when their numbers were most scarce).

Should the SDA biologists, who are supposed to teach “creation science,” be fired if they teach what you have just conceded?


La Sierra Univeristy Fires Dr. Lee Greer; Signs anti-Creation Bond
For those aghast about the LSU situation and wondering what other SDA institutions have taken out bonds, hold on to your britches. You’ll be stunned when you learn (soon) how many of our other schools, and which ones in particular, have taken out these bonds. You will be amazed to learn just how many other administrators have deliberately secularized their institutions besides Randal Wisbey, presumably because they too hate the SDA Church (as David Read has put it so tactfully).

Be sure to protest equally loudly.


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Sean Pitman:

So clearly you believe that science can explain supernatural events. Congratulations on that.