In case you haven't heard, the CU Board of Trustees voted to reinstate Dr. White as President last week, but not without controversy.
Both Dr. Danny Akin, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Rev. Mark Vroegop, Lead Pastor of College Park Church in Indiana and author of the 2020 Christian Book of the Year, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament, protested the decision, issuing public statements of opposition and resignation from the board.
You can read Dr. Akin's letter, attached here.
You can read Rev. Vroegop's letter here:
http://markvroegop.com/resignation-from-the-board-of-trustees-of-cedarville-university/
In addition, The Gospel Coalition published this article condemning the decision over the weekend:
And it appears that the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has removed Dr. White from its board and membership (though mysteriously, Joy White is still listed as a council member):
https://cbmw.org/about/board-of-directors/
https://cbmw.org/about/council/
To state the obvious, we are extremely disappointed with the trustees' decision and find the wording in their resolution, issued at the end of the day Friday, to be both misleading and inaccurate. For more information about that statement--and our analysis of it--you can visit the articles and our comments posted at The Roys Report and The Wartburg Watch.
https://julieroys.com/cedarville-reinstates-president-white-two-trustees-resign/
&
The second Megan Lively revealed that both Thomas and Joy White helped Paige Patterson cover up her rape in 2003 and blame/shame her for it should have been the end for the Whites (https://julieroys.com/rape-victim-whose-story-ousted-paige-patterson-says-cedarville-pres-thomas-white-was-part-of-cover-up/ Paige Patterson was fired for this behavior and disgraced. How the Whites still have jobs (and a 9000-foot mansion in the works!) is beyond us. Add in all the other details and people involved in the Moore scandal, however, as well as all the revelations about abuses of power at CU that have come out in recent weeks, and it's truly mystifying how Mindy Mindy, Jon Wood, Jason Lee, Tom Mach, Loren Reno, and others still have jobs there, too.
If you are alumni, donors, or even community members unconnected to CU, you have a voice. Please use it to contact local media (The Dayton Daily News, The Springfield News-Sun, WHIO-TV, WDTN-TV etc), national media (Christianity Today, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Religious News Service, etc.), the Higher Learning Commission (anyone can file a complaint & the process is easy--and serious--complaints go straight to the HLC's legal offices in Chicago: https://www.hlcommission.org/Student-Resources/complaints.html and especially, each other.
Some alumni/donors are considering working together to finance a truly independent and objective investigation that would actually be thorough and trustworthy (e.g., through G.R.A.C.E.). We see past success with alumni voices, in fact, as BJU Alumni insisted BJU hire G.R.A.C.E. several years ago--and they did. We'd welcome such an investigation, though sadly, we have zero resources to pay for it.
Others are considering withholding donations and contacting the development offices to let them know why. Parents are also considering not sending their children to CU as students at all or not allowing them to return in the fall. (We who are parents are also making these difficult decisions.)
All these actions would be effective because the trustees seem to believe that since White has brought CU financial success, that is all that matters. Thus, CU will have to begin to hurt financially in order to get the trustees to move. Short of disbanding the board of trustees altogether (which we have no power to do ourselves), decreasing enrollment and donations could wake them up. Money, after all, talks.