Yes, Liberty University is back in the news — for valid reasons. Yes, the news involves accusations of sexual violence.
Let’s start with the basics. It’s never good for a Baptist institution when the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention publishes a story like this one: “Ex-Liberty spokesman says he was fired for raising concerns.”
The only thing missing from that somewhat soft headline is, well, the sex angle. However, that promptly shows up in the lede. Once again, we are talking about the overture in a story from a conservative, Baptist press office:
A former spokesperson for Liberty University is suing the evangelical school after being fired, alleging in a lawsuit filed Monday (Oct. 25) that his termination came in retaliation for voicing concerns that sexual misconduct accusations were mishandled.
Scott Lamb, a vice president-level executive at the school where he was hired in 2018, said in an interview with The Associated Press that he pushed for answers about what was being done to investigate claims raised in a lawsuit filed over the summer by 12 women, and was continually dissatisfied.
The women’s lawsuit, which is still ongoing, alleged the school had a pattern of mishandling cases of sexual assault and harassment and had fostered an unsafe campus environment. A student-led movement has since been established to advocate for systemic reforms, and the nonprofit investigative journalism outlet ProPublica published a deeply reported investigation … with findings similar to the allegations raised in the lawsuit.
Now, the key to all of this is the brutal contents of that ProPublica piece: “ ‘The Liberty Way’: How Liberty University Discourages and Dismisses Students’ Reports of Sexual Assaults.” If you want a quick summary of the accusations — in another rather conservative source — check out this report at The New York Post: “Liberty University accused of making it ‘impossible’ to report rape, lawsuit alleges.”
The ProPublica report is, of course, hostile to Liberty University in every way possible. It’s also clear that Liberty officials appear to have gone out of their way to earn that hostility — in large part by refusing, at ever twist in the plot, to speak on the record about the university’s perspective on these issues.
Let me also note that there are privacy-law issues lurking in the background. The female victims, in these hellish events, have chosen to tell their stories and to back them up with documents, photos and smartphone information.
With one exception — because of a lawsuit — the males involved in these cases have chosen silence. Thus, anything that Liberty officials say about how males were or were not disciplined could leave the university wide open to lawsuits based on privacy issues.
At this point, please allow me to stop and make a few personal remarks. I have been involved in arguments about Christian colleges and sexual violence for decades, all the way back to my student-journalism days in the mid-1970s at Baylor University. I have also spent the better part of three decades involved in Christian higher education — at a seminary, two liberal-arts colleges and as the leader of a journalism program in Washington, D.C., for students from schools throughout the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.
I have been involved, as a faculty member or program director, in a number of cases in which students violated the doctrinal and lifestyle covenants that defined the standards for campus life in these voluntary communities. A few of these cases involved sexual misconduct or sexual harassment. Almost all of these cases — as is the norm at secular and sacred schools — involved alcohol. I have never faced the challenge of handling a rape accusation.
I bring this up because of a strategic decision that ProPublica editors made in the framing of these terrible cases. It involves a crucial phrase — “The Liberty Way.” Here is a key passage:
“The goal of The Liberty Way (Student Honor Code) is to encourage and instruct our students how to love God through a life of service to others,” the code says. “The way we treat each other in our community is a direct reflection of our love of God.”
Central to the Liberty Way is a focus on abstinence prior to marriage, what’s known in evangelical communities as purity culture. As the Liberty Way puts it, “Sexual relations outside of a biblically-ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman are not permissible at Liberty University.”
First of all, I am not sure that having a doctrinal code that defines the moral standards for a Christian campus is automatically “purity culture.” If that is the case, then all efforts to advocate and defend centuries of Christian moral theology are automatically “purity culture.” That may be what ProPublica editors have assumed to be true, because they believed that was the norm at Liberty.
Here’s the big question: Can a school defend its core values and doctrines without sliding into toxic territory in which victims of sexual violence are silenced and mistreated, both legally and spiritually?
It’s clear that, for ProPublica editors, the phrase “The Liberty Way” describes both the doctrinal and lifestyle code and what appears to be the school’s semi-official system that is prejudiced against young women who make claims that they have been sexually abused and even raped.
Let’s look at one or two key passages:
When Elizabeth Axley first told Liberty University officials she had been raped, she was confident they’d do the right thing. After all, the evangelical Christian school invoked scripture to encourage students to report abuse.
“Speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves, for the rights of all who need an advocate. —Proverbs 31:8.” It was quoted in large type across an information sheet from the school’s office tasked with handling discrimination and abuse.
Axley was a first-year student at Liberty in the fall of 2017. She had been at the school less than three months. One Saturday night, she went to a Halloween party at an off-campus apartment and drank eight shots of vodka, along with a couple of mixed drinks. She doesn’t remember much after that, until, she recalls, waking up with a fellow student on top of her and his hand pressed over her mouth. (The student denies Axley’s allegations.)
It’s important to note that Axley’s drinking clearly violated the Liberty covenant. It’s possible that Liberty officials wanted her to own up to that violation.
However, the actions of the male student are the key issue here. I have been involved in a case or two in which female students faced minor discipline charges in a case, while the male students (we are talking about sexual harassment here, not rape) faced a variety of discipline charges that even led to them being kicked out of the school/program. Rather than being kicked out, the young women were offered help in various forms, including counseling.
With that in mind, read the thesis statement for this long ProPublica feature:
Universities across the country have long faced scrutiny for their handling, and mishandling, of sexual assault cases. But Liberty University’s responses to such cases stand out. Interviews with more than 50 former Liberty students and staffers, as well as records from more than a dozen cases, show how an ethos of sexual purity, as embodied by the Liberty Way, has led to school officials discouraging, dismissing and even blaming female students who have tried to come forward with claims of sexual assault.
Three students, including Axley, recalled being made to sign forms acknowledging possible violations of the Liberty Way after they sought to file complaints about sexual assaults. Others say they were also warned against reporting what had happened to them. Students say that even Liberty University police officers discouraged victims from pursuing charges after reporting assaults.
Now, let’s divide that second paragraph into two parts. First, “Three students, including Axley, recalled being made to sign forms acknowledging possible violations of the Liberty Way after they sought to file complaints about sexual assaults.” As I stated, some young women may be been asked to admit violations of the covenant document that they had signed — almost certainly involving drinking.
What other discipline charges were involved, especially those linked to sexual misconduct? There’s really no way to know in this news feature, because it involves crossfire in the accusations made by young women and the young men involved in these cases.
Reading on, that paragraph states: “Others say they were also warned against reporting what had happened to them. Students say that even Liberty University police officers discouraged victims from pursuing charges after reporting assaults.”
This gets us into the issues at the heart of the piece. Did Liberty University officials threaten female students — in various ways — with harsh punishments if they reported rapes and, in the host hellish case documented in this must-read article, even backed their accusations with hard evidence?
Here is my question: Did members of the ProPublica team make any attempts to talk to officials at other Christian schools — schools that are doing what they can to defend orthodoxy, while also doing everything they can to protect the legal rights of victims of sexual abuse and even rape?
In other words, is what happens at Liberty normal, at conservative Christian academic institutions? I have seen, and heard about, cases in which women appear to have been singled out for harsher punishment while there was no way to know — in a cloud of legal silence — what punishments males received for their actions. I have seen cases in which the punishment for male students was appropriately harsh.
Once again, let me state that I have not been involved in helping a student deal with a case of alleged rape. I have tremendous respect for Christian educators who have handled cases of that kind in a way that provided Christian love, along with legal justice.
What will happen with these Liberty cases?
A lawsuit filed in July against Liberty recounted similar patterns. The suit, brought by a dozen unnamed former students, asserts that the school failed to help victims of sexual assault and that the school’s student honor code made assault more likely by making it “difficult or impossible” for students to report sexual violence. The suit also claims that the “public and repeated retaliation against women who did report their victimization” created a dangerous campus environment. (Liberty has declined to comment on the pending litigation.)
Stay tuned. Let’s see what emerges in court testimony or in settlement documents.