Should a lesbian be kicked out of a Christian school, then have to pay back her loans?
Zack Ford of ThinkProgress writes about Danielle Powell, a former student of Grace University in Oklahoma, who was expelled from the school for “sexually immoral behavior” for having a girlfriend and then later asked to repay her loans.
The University is a Christian, private school, and here are the rules:
Grace’s Student Handbook includes a litany of rules all students are required to sign and abide by. For example, students are not allowed to watch HBO, VH1, MTV, BET, Comedy Central, or any R-rated movie on campus. It also includes severe limitations on displays of affection, explicitly prohibiting activities like “extending holding or embracing one another,” “lying next to each other,” kissing, and “giving backrubs/rubbing shoulders.” “Homosexual acts” are considered “sexually immoral behavior” and thus a “Level-Three violation,” which at minimum includes University Probation and possibly fines starting at $100…
Sounds strict to me, but what do you expect when you choose to go to a private Christian college?
At UCLA, they’d probably have to expel 95% of us if they had those rules.
Danielle Powell “was expelled in the spring of 2011, just months before graduating, after it was discovered she was in a relationship with another woman”, which is a total no-no and completely breaking the rules she agreed to. If she was in a relationship with a man—the rules still would have applied and she would have been expelled.
According to Ford, however:
It’s no secret that many Christian-affiliated colleges enforce very strict behavioral expectations for their students, but Danielle Powell is realizing just how vindictive a college can be when those expectations are not met…Now, the school is demanding she pay back $6,000, claiming she has to repay her federal loans and grants since she did not finish the semester.
This isn’t a college being “vindictive” for “not meeting expectations”, this is a student breaking the college’s rules then the college asking that the student pay back the money she borrowed from them to go there.
Powell actually attempted to follow through on the remediation plan the school originally laid out for her, which included months of church attendance, Christian counseling, and promises not to engage in sex. She was readmitted, then promptly kicked out again because the staff’s “prevailing opinion is that those professions appear to have been insincere, at best, if not deceitful.” In other words, Grace is essentially fining a former student for not convincing the faculty she is straight enough to complete her education there.
Grace is not fining a former student for unsuccessfully convincing them she’s “straight enough”, they’re fining her because she has unpaid loans. If she had graduated and there was no issue, but still walked out on $6k in loans, the school is still going to fine her.
She chose to go to a school that said “no homosexual acts” or even opposite-sex “displays of affection”—so this isn’t even a “gay issue”.
Powell is fighting the school’s bill in court. She is optimistic, given Grace has released her transcripts last September in spite of the outstanding bill. A Change.org petition urging the university to waive the supposed debt has already garnered over 50,000 signatures.
A useless petition that is urging the university to swallow the costs of one of its former students breaking the rules and skipping out on the bill has received 50,000 signatures.
If you go into a restaurant that clearly says “no shoes, no shirt, no service”, order food, take off your clothes, start to eat, get kicked out, promise you’ll put your clothes on but stay naked anyway, then skip out on the bill, you’d be arrested for dining-and-dashing.
How is this any different if you choose to go to a school with really restrictive rules, break the rules, then skip out on paying for an education that, if you graduated, you still would’ve had to pay for?
