One guy -- BJU Class of 2007 Matthew Weathers -- is swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles, and jogging 26.2 miles four times on four consecutive days from March 17 through 20th in order to raise $1,000,000 for student tuition (a.k.a. for BJU).
He will start at 3am every day swimming off campus and then biking and jogging on campus. He'll be done by 6pm every night.
He does NOT want students donating money. They've done enough, he says, by raising $112k for Bible Conference. He wants them to ask their "rich uncles" to pitch in though.
Instead students are there to "pray."
BJU will do literally anything -- anything -- to keep going.
Kathryn Post's article struck me again with how little has changed.
As far as I know, the only actual justice has come in the guilty plea from Pastor Jonathan Alan Weaver, BJU Class of 1986.
Do you remember how BJU actually responded to BJU Class of 1986 Jonathan Alan Weaver? WutBJU documented it. Here's the timeline:
2014: The GRACE Team confronts Bob Jones University administrators for their criminal handling of the sexual assault of a student in their care. Jim Berg claims it was some sort of “consensual” rape.
2015 December: The GRACE Report identified Shielagh Thompson Clark’s case as Case #777.
2019 May: Weaver is on the BJU campus for Commencement.
2020 March: Greenville County arrested Jonathan Alan Weaver on two counts of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature.
2021 April: Jonathan Alana Weaver took an Alford Plea against those two counts. He received 10 years probation.
WutBJU explained this before:
In 2014, Jim Berg and Bob Jones III knew what Weaver had committed. They knew. We all know they knew. Frankly they knew in 2005 when his church drummed him out (without calling the police, it appears).
But in 2014 and again in 2015, the BJU administration KNEW what Weaver did. They knew his danger to young college-aged women.
And in May 2019, he’s on campus.
But get this. You ready?
He’s arrested in March 2020 for sexual assault. BJU says they “regret” their actions in mishandling his crime that same month.
Let's take a moment to reflect on this decade since the GRACE Report's release.
Many props to Kathryn Post's article in the Religion News Service. She gathered a wide variety of sources here, and new voices too.
Personally I am overwhelmed that it's been a decade with so little accomplished.
I guess it should be no surprise that with a President-Elect who is a known rapist and who surrounds himself with accused rapists that America just doesn't give one whit about sexual assaults on college campuses.
Let's never forget that after Stephen Jones fired-and-then-rehired GRACE and after he got "sick," BJU called in Steve Pettit to "fix" their reputation. And remember what he said:
In the spirit of candor, it should be noted that the reviewers to date have found no evidence that the University protected any perpetrators or failed to comply with its reporting obligations. I am relieved by these conclusions. They are important. But they do not make up for the fact that we did not serve our students as well as we should have.
He was lying. And I listed out the lies at the time. But BJU and its loyalists went with a comfortable lie.
However, survivors of Bob Jones University's mishandling of sexual assault persist. And Kathryn Post centered them and their words in her article
Sheri Cotuna, whose account of being sexually assaulted by a BJU student in the 1990s was referenced in the report, said her interview with GRACE employees was the first time she heard the abuse condemned as “not of God,” and ultimately empowered her to report her abuser to police nearly two decades after the incident. Erin Burchwell, another abuse survivor and GRACE participant, said the report was the “beginning of connecting victims through social media, giving people a little bit of a voice.”
But some abuse survivors involved in the initial investigation fear too little has changed since the report. They say the university continues to implement a biblical counseling method critiqued in the report and to employ faculty members the report says promoted harmful practices. Referencing an ongoing lawsuit filed against the university by a former Bob Jones student in August 2020, they continue to call on the university to implement trauma-informed policies that prioritize student safety and healing over correction. ...
For Shielagh Clark, a former Bob Jones student who participated in the 2014 GRACE report, the situation feels eerily familiar.
Shielagh Clark. (Photo by Rachael Thompson)
Clark, a student of Bob Jones University in 2005, was asked to withdraw from the university after she became pregnant from what she has said was a rape by her longtime pastor, who was later charged with two counts of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature in relation to his crimes against Clark, which dated back to 2000.
Nearly a decade later, during the GRACE investigation, Jim Berg, who served as dean of students between 1981 and 2010 and oversaw the campus’s response to abuse disclosures, defended the university’s decision to remove her from school for lying to obtain a pass to leave the school the day of the alleged rape. The GRACE report called Clark’s case a “tragic example of someone who needed compassion and healing but instead received discipline.”
According to Clark, the university exhibits a pattern of being more concerned about “sin or obedience” than about people.
“It seems from the outside that they did the exact same thing,” said Clark about the lawsuit involving Jane Roe. “They prioritized the rules over the human being.”...
Cotuna recalls being counseled in this method by Berg after reporting her 1993 assault.
“Basically all of it was him asking the details about every little bit of what happened, and trying to get me to understand why God caused this. Because what kind of thing was in my life that would attract this, that would make this happen?” said Cotuna. “Yes, the offender caused me harm, but the greater harm was from the counseling and the school’s response, because they destroyed any hope I had of anything from God, any kind of comfort.”
In sum, BJU hired GRACE because the Feds have put colleges "on notice" for their handing of sexual assault. That is the initial fact acciden
Why did BJU hire GRACE?
BJU hired GRACE because the Feds have put colleges “on notice” for their handing of sexual assault. That is the initial fact accidentally revealed in BJU’s revision of the timeline.
