If you are a student of Messiah College or affiliated with the school in any way, by now you know the name Zach McDonough much too well. This is the boy who has been posting on his social media comparing people who support the pro-choice movement to slave owners and Nazis. There wouldn’t be an issue with him exercising his right to free speech if it didn’t consist of him tweeting things such as, “My plantation my choice”, and “A man should have the right to rape, his body his choice.” Not only is this wildly not correlational to the topic of abortion, but it directly violates Messiah’s Community Covenant as well.

The Community Covenant is a document students are asked to sign their first week in attendance of the school, outlining and detailing the campuses’ rules and regulations. Messiah is quite diligent in condemning those that break other rules such as the no drinking policy or the visitation rules, but seems to always turn a blind eye to cases such as these. In the past, they have also given little to no punishment to people accused of sexual assault, rape, and harassment. Which begs the question of, does the school actually care about everything that goes on with their students, or are they more concerned with their name as a “Christian” institution being tarnished? From my observation, I believe it would be the latter. 

Messiah is once again turning a blind eye to the hatred and bigotry that resides on its campus. On 11/15/2019, a tweet was sent out from the Messiah Sports twitter claiming that Zach had been removed from the basketball team, seemingly as a form of punishment. This would have been a small start in disciplinary action, if, in fact, Zach had not already quit the team on his own prior to any of his social media outbursts. So instead of actually taking action, Messiah lied to make it sound like they were taking action, when in reality they have done nothing at all and most likely will continue to do nothing. 

Messiah claims to be a safe and welcoming place to its current and perspective students, but in reality it is anything but. It is a place where LGBTQ students are all but ignored and shunned, if you wear a crop top you’re immediately labeled a slut, and students with terrifying and sickening worldviews are not only invited in, but embraced. Something must be done about this apathy that the school administration has. Change needs to happen. Messiah has this outside look of a beautiful campus with beautiful people, but that could not be anything further from the truth and it needs to be changed immediately, starting with disciplinary action towards Zach McDonough.