FIRST, and most important,
"Perhaps we should all follow the example of some of the only people on campus who DO set a good example and live by it. The faculty."

THE PROFESSORS GET IT RIGHT. Are they at odds with the administration? Based on my analysis of the anti-university, most of the professors are at odds with, perhaps, half of the administration, and the other half is fighting alongside them for the cause of academic excellence. But let me tell you a story, told originally to me by one of the very best of our excellent DBU faculty . . .

Once upon a time, a group of intellectuals got together and said, "Hey, let's start a place where we can hang out and study and think and have debates and teach students wonderful things like philosophy, theology, and science!" Thus the university was born, and, ah, it was a grand day. Later the intellectuals hired some clerks to help them with their business matters; the clerks took care of administering the place while the intellectuals devoted their time to professorship.

Then, one day the clerks took over the university and began to control the professors. That, my young Snipes, is where that great invention, the university, stands today.

SECOND . . .
"buy a reality... Since DBU doesn't listen to who WE want to have as a speaker in chapel and only brings in those that suit their political agenda it is absolutely their fault that chapel is a time of naps and homework."

--So, so much to say. It's ironic, eh? The DBU Snipe site is accused of being too soft on the administration. Am I included in that? Everything's changed; mayber we'll get some rumors that I don't like the Writing Center (ours is the best overall Turabian resource on the internet, I've looked [Duke, Bucknell, Temple, they all have errors and don't cover Turabian author-date style]). Who do we want, though? I don't know, a lot of the students want entertainment (wimps). Those of us who care probably want professors. (For that matter, the utter disaster that is freshman chapel has an obvious solution: senior Biblical Studies majors should speak in freshman chapel, maybe, just to make sure it's ok . . . males, with 3.5-plus GPA, recommended by full-time religion faculty, and with adminstration-approved messages.)

VERY IMPORTANTLY, note that chapel is very much marked by DBU towing the BGCT-moderate party line. Spring '04, as I recall, we had four or five SBTC and SBC speakers like Paige Patterson and the president of Criswell College. This semester, I don't think we've had so much as Mac Brunson of FBC Dallas. However, we have had five or six women speaking in chapel. I just wrote Dr. Bell forty pages on I Tim. 2; women speaking in chapel is all well and good for inerrantists like myself, if we think Paul's injunction can be illuminated by Aquilla-Priscilla-Apollos in the books of Acts, if we think that the injunction against women teaching and having authority over men does not apply to mature women whose authority over younger Christians is shared with a husband who is also a minister.

However, coming from DBU's BGCT context, it's not at all well and good. As I recall, female pastors was the issue that convinced some inerrantists to start up the SBTC. I could theoretically dig females speaking in chapel, and I'm not offended by it per se. But it's almost certainly Karl Barth's moderate view of Scripture here, and I most certainly am against that. I speak not against DBU, not against the BGCT. I have a stake at least in DBU, BGCT, SBTC, and SBC. Not against any of these groups, but against Karl Barth, I say this: Stop stealing my school and my convention away from me! Stop stealing it away from its people! We are DBU students, we are DBU faculty, we are BGCT parishoners! We are inerrantists! Why have you taken away our voice? Why have you censored our beliefs?

MOST IMPORTANTLY, it is true what the Anti-Snipe insinuates; DBU's adminstration has a bunch of students who don't take chapel seriously, and can only share in the blame for asking them to not take chapel seriously, for all the years the administration did not take it seriously.

Two questions to ponder:
--Does DBU's administration have the credibility to criticize its students?
--Does the DBU Snipe site have the credibility?

I will only answer the first one. In regards to academics, yes. Gail Linam, our lovely provost, and DBU's administration have hired some of the best professors in the world. In regards to morals, it's not so easy.

Here are two examples. A, Chapel has been watered down way too many times. B, Residence Life doesn't enforce the dress code very well; it is a problem if a girl skips a few chapels, the vast majority of which will teach her zero theology; it's not a problem if a girl wears clothing that allows me to get a good look at, from a good angle, three or four inches of cleavage (that would be a 'good' angle; we'd better not talk about a 'great' angle).

(Such silly girls are absolutely not off the hook, either; no sinful or foolish students are off the hook. Some of you ladies need to stop. Modesty is an awfully attractive thing, to say nothing of lust being a bad thing and skimpy clothing a darn bad witness.)

IN FAVOR OF THE ADMINISTRATION: Several random points in random order, not elaborated upon but probably each at least as important as any negative point above.

--First, even the anti-university is not in itself a bad thing but merely a lesser good.
--Second, there are those students who are in need of quite a few of the current style of chapel services.
--Third, a lot of money is well-spent, and what's not can probably be at least partially blamed on donors.
--Fourth, for that matter, a lot of administrating is done very well. With exceptions like the chapel scanners (a joke that's not even funny), most things work really well.
--Fifth, there is still a sense in the administration that chapel is for our benefit. They don't always seem to know what we need, but they mean well.
--Sixth, guinea pigs are superior rodents to hamsters.
--Seventh, numerous administration people (I don't know, how about Heather Hadlock, is she admin?) are awfully nice people really.
--Eighth, academics are taken very seriously probably by most of the administration, at least somewhat seriously by all.
--Ninth, the Developing a Christian Mind course is not just a good thing. It's exactly what Christian education should be; in spite of being orthodox, it's cutting edge, too, because most Christian schools don't do liberal arts/Christian worldview/writing-across-the-curriculum as well as we do.
--Tenth, the administration cannot easily be separated from the professors, who are WONDERFUL.
--Eleventh, let's not have any nonsense about "liberals." There is a powerful presence of Barthian moderates; I doubt DBU has any liberals at all.
--Twelfth, while second-best-effort is never an excuse, who knows? We do a lot of things better than a lot of schools, maybe even chapel is done better.
--Thirteenth, the critics of DBU have been known to splice the occasional comma (see above) . . .