We have an official response from the college. Spoiler alert. It's short. Really short. Think "silence." (More on that below.)
Do you feel that silence is an inadequate response to serious allegations of a sexual abuse cover-up? If so, you're not alone, but there are things you can still do. You can:
- Write to Dale Wong, the chair of the Board of Trustees (dale.wong@wheaton.edu)
- Call Wheaton College at (630) 752-5000
- Forward the petition on to others you know
That last option makes a big difference. Wheaton College needs to know that the entire world is watching. It is because of people like you who forwarded this petition on so faithfully that we are now approaching 2,000 signatures, so...
Thank you, one more time! May God be honored by the outcome.
PS -- Below is the letter I posted to the Alumni Facebook page for Wheaton College
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"I am aware of the petition but have no information to offer."
That was the response I received from the Wheaton College Board of Trustees regarding the petition linked here. How should we, as alumni, interpret this wall of silence?
The documentation backing the petition is exhaustive and damning, so any notion that it doesn't even merit a response simply isn't plausible. Tens of thousands of people have watched the videos and seen those documents. In just a few weeks, nearly 2,000 people signed the petition—and many of those signatures came from us.
Yet here we are. President Ryken has ignored Julie Roys's request for a response, and the board has nothing to say to me, to you, or to anyone else who signed the petition. How shall we then respond, since Wheaton College will not?
Jesus's own words offer guidance.
‘Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift. — Matthew 5:23-24
As is now well documented, Wheaton College has much reconciliation to do, but it has apologized for nothing and reconciled itself to none of the victims noted in the petition. Wheaton College is ignoring Jesus's instructions. The appropriate response is to call Wheaton College to account.
Yes, Wheaton College sent out an email in 2024 that spoke of lament and regret—but it didn't even name those it had wronged, let alone present an apology combined with offers of restitution. That was no Zacchaeus moment. That was an attempt to create a paper trail suggesting that Wheaton College had learned from a past disaster that it couldn't even bring itself to describe accurately, let alone make full amends for. I am reminded of Dallas Willard's prophetic words:
How very familiar such evasion and irresponsibility is. How crassly common. Everyone knows what it is, but “business is business.”
I pray the day will come when the godly men and women on our board recognize that, in order for Wheaton College to truly live up to the name of the One it claims to serve, it must actually follow His instructions.
Some have asked what the goal of the petition is. I wrote it with the hope of bringing that day of healing and true Shalom nearer by following Jesus's guidance recorded in Matthew 18—a process often abused but in this case honored.
Kathy (Massaro) Gallagher waited sixteen years before confronting Wheaton College in 2014 about its hidden sins (well-documented in the petition updates and intentionally not rehashed here). The petition, presented twelve years later, was an appropriate next step in dealing with a deeply unrepentant party. It made those sins public. Through Roys Report posts and that petition, tens of thousands of people around the globe are now aware of what Wheaton College has done—and what it hasn't.
What remains to be seen is whether the wider Wheaton community, in obedience to Jesus, will use stronger forms of leverage to hold Wheaton College accountable for failures already known around the globe—or whether silence in the face of guilt will prove, yet again, an effective tool in the college's PR playbook.