Whatever you do, don't think.

[kellinator]

I just received an interlibrary loan from Bob Jones University (yes, I know, it's an oxymoron) and was struck by the large, bright pink notice pasted inside the front cover:

"The fact that this volume is included in the Bob Jones University Library does not mean that the University endorses its contents from the standpoint of morals, philosophy, theology, or scientific hypotheses. The position of Bob Jones University on these subjects is well known.

In order to standardize the work and validate the credits of Bob Jones University, it is sometimes necessary to include in this library books whose contents the University cannot wholly endorse."

I am translating this as...

"OMG the awful liberal educated people who run accreditation boards say we have to have a library with more than one opinion in it or they won't let us call ourselves a university!! Well, fine, but WE DON'T LIKE IT!! So here, have this book, but don't you DARE think about it for yourself!!"

Hey, doesn't Bob Jones know what they say about pink?

When I showed this to a co-worker, she told me about Pensacola Christian College, which makes Bob Jones look like a party school in comparison. She mentioned in particular the rule that students of the opposite sex cannot look at each other too intently, lest they commit "optical intercourse", colloquially known as "making eye babies." I replied that these people clearly are the ones with dirty minds, as they see sex absolutely everywhere.

I'd really like to wrap this up with a pithy comment, but I'm too aghast to come up with one, so I'll just state that these lunatics do more harm than good to Christianity. It's impossible to provide witness when people like these ensure Christians have a reputation as idiots. Jesus, save me from Your followers.

Comments

[tikimama.livejournal.com]

BJU chooses not to be accredited (according to Al Franken's book) so they needn't worry about accredidation boards.

But I'm dying to know what the book is!

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

It's a textbook -- Social Psychology, Fourth Edition! It's like a Psych 101 textbook! It's not even controversial! (Of course, I'm sure they don't have the books that are actually controversial.)

[stevietee.livejournal.com]

Forgive them, Father, for they are whack.

[sage-and-sea.livejournal.com]

I just heard about PCC yesterday, and I can't think of "making eye babies" without hearing Ralph Wiggum in my head...

"..and they were kissing and they made a baby and the baby came out and it winked at me!"

[m0usegrrl.livejournal.com]

my xBF Lizard's x-wife went to Pensacola Christian College -- i remember her telling me about the eye babies... ::twitch:: she got better, except mostly not.

[tfcocs.livejournal.com]

The sentiments around the "eye babies" issue sounds a lot like the reasoning behind the wearing of the burkkah in Islamic communities. Actually, IMHO, the Christian version is more oppressive because, while Islamic doctrine recognizes that the flesh is weak, it proscribes a remedy to allow deobjectification for both sexes. The fundamentalists, however, do not. They prscribe a certain behavior that is unrealistic.

[johnsixteen33.livejournal.com]

i think that was a very interesting point.

[sallerina.livejournal.com]

that kind of thing really amazes me. i go to a very christian university and somehow am managing to receive a very fair, equal-minded, and actually compassionate education that is no more over-dramatically evangelical than my pathos-less public undergrad education.

[redbird]

Quite. My favorite radio station is run by "the Jesuit university of New York City" (as Fordham keeps identifying itself in the station identifications).

[jp7.livejournal.com]

Thanks.. :)

I am now going to have optical intercourse with every woman on the train today.

It's going to be a fun ride home. :)


:D

[leopard-print.livejournal.com]

I just about fell out of my desk chair over "making eye babies".

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

I am going to be metaquoting you and pointing people to the equally funny comments.

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

*blush*

[walkinlikecain.livejournal.com]

"Optical Intercourse"??? Holy whacko's bat-man...then I must be the Wilt Chamberlin of making eye-babies!!!

[azurelunatic]

... Optical intercourse?

[polychromatic22.livejournal.com]

I wanna make, like, 10,000 eye babies with you.

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

This might be the best compliment ever. :D

[hopefulnebula]

Hi. Here from metaquotes. The chronicle.com article is password protected, fyi... :/

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

Oh, bummer... I was probably able to access it because I work at a university...

The part I was referring to:
Even couples who are not talking or touching can be reprimanded. Sabrina Poirier, a student at Pensacola who withdrew in 1997, was disciplined for what is known on the campus as "optical intercourse" — staring too intently into the eyes of a member of the opposite sex. This is also referred to as "making eye babies." While the rule does not appear in written form, most students interviewed for this article were familiar with the concept.

As she tells it, Ms. Poirier was not gazing lovingly at her boyfriend; he had something in his eye. But officials didn't buy her explanation, and she and her boyfriend were both "socialed," she says.

[mr-black-cat.livejournal.com]

Thats almost as bad as that gay reform program that got mentioned a while back. Its cult behavior, and its sad that people get suckered in to believing it.

[theniwokesoftly.livejournal.com]

Here via Metaquotes. That reminds me of Liberty University in Virginia. It frightens me.

I love the rule that says you can get in trouble for having a member of the opposite sex in your dorm room or 'allowing the same'. As in, if I were there and my roommate had her boyfriend in the room, I would be in trouble. I've always wondered what would happen if I was there and I had my girlfriend in my room. It's not PDA and she wouldn't be of the opposite sex!

[mr-black-cat.livejournal.com]

You'd never get past the front gate:

[quote]Under no circumstances will pornography,
premarital or extramarital sex, homosexuality, or
other sex perversions be allowed.[/quote]

But dont feel bad, I probably couldnt make it 20 feet without doing something worthy of being expelled, and possibly burned at the stake.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

My husband said, "what's so funny?" I told him about "optical intercourse."

He said, "Well, why do you think they call it eye-balling?"

ba-dump ching!

[adamosity.livejournal.com]

I'll take "optical intercourse" for 600, alex :-)

[nyxalinth.livejournal.com]

Do these people also have buckles on their shoes and funny hats? they sound like Puritans to me...Guh. People scare me more every day.

[ms-anthropy.livejournal.com]

Practically. The dress codes make them very, very easy to spot on the street. Also the BJU ones travel in packs (by school rules) so they can report on each other, or at least that was the case when my friend went there - I saw the student handbook with my own eyes. I wish I were making that up.

[rocketmelee.livejournal.com]

Dude. Did you know that I had to go to their highschool for, like, a year and a half when I lived in Florida? (LOOOOOOOOOOOONG story) It's even worse than you would think, I could tell you stories that would curl your hair...

[mr-black-cat.livejournal.com]

Oh do tell. Trainwrecks are fun to watch.

[dhyanarae.livejournal.com]

Kelly, I was so impressed by the many comments on this thread that I forgot what I wanted to say about being agast about evangelicals. I had to go back and re-read your post, finally it came back to me. I was agast today too. Today for the first time ever, I witnessed a man evangelizing to the Wachovia Bank teller. Grrr... There is no limit to the craziness.

[kokopellinelli]

Here from metaquotes. I would just like to express my love for the phrases "optical intercourse" and "making eye babies," though I'm quite disgusted by the reasoning behind them. Oy.

[whysoblue.livejournal.com]

How funny, absurd, and just plain sad.

Your ILL stories are always the best.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rikiki/]

Bob Jones can be scary sometimes. *grew up in Greenville, has a sister who went there for a few years* They only recently got accredited, which meant I had to stop teasing my sister about how her school wasn't real.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rikiki/]

Here from metaquotes, btw. And y'know what's funniest about BJU, imho? Apparently the students call it 'BJ' for short. I don't know if my sister ever figured out why the rest of us always sniggered when she called it that.

[ms-anthropy.livejournal.com]

Wandered over from metaquotes. FYI, BJU lost their accreditation years ago due to unwillingness to admit african-americans and later, after they finally admitted them, to allow "fraternization."

They have a very famous gallery of religious art - the real deal, they actually own a Rembrandt. The gallery is on the campus and is open to the public, but years ago you had to follow their dress codes to get in, and I believe the policy is still in place. We went there on a tour when I was in high school, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and the tour guide at the gallery was a BJU grad student in art. He described to us how he had worked on the team responsible for painting drapes over the genitalia of the cherubs in certain (priceless, irreplaceable, centuries-old) masters the gallery had in its collection. He was very proud to have been chosen for this task. It was apparently a great honor. He actually showed us some examples as we toured the gallery, and sho'nuff, although it was skillfully executed, due to a glaring difference in the age of the paint you couldn't miss where they had actually painted little drapes over the crotches of the renaissance cherubs.

Most of the stories you hear about the place are completely absurd, but the most absurd ones are invariably the ones that turn out to be true.

And "making eye babies" is my new favorite phrase ever.

[ms-anthropy.livejournal.com]

Correction - they lost their accreditation years ago when they refused to integrate, but someone with more recent info than mine says they recently got it back, so I don't know.

[kth-dragon.livejournal.com]

Man, and I thought that BJU was scary when they came to advertise at my high school... the "pink and blue sidewalks" issue really got me (boys and girls can't even walk together), and the dress code was terrible. I hate skirts and dresses.

I thought Berry was bad for repressing information about on-campus crime (especially rape) and punishing the victims, and having a system where you can get more demerits for having *consensual* sex on-campus than for committing *murder* (though both are still expellable offenses, so the numerical difference is slight).

But this...GAH. My eyes almost fell out. Those people scare me. 0..o And not just because I've made tons of eye babies over the years, either.