samsnewsletter.doc is a collection of thoughts about feelings and feelings about thoughts. The newsletter is free, but I’d be honored if you shared it with a friend or two. Enjoy!
So far in this series I’ve written at length about some of the significant stories that made the news and what it felt like to actually take part in them at Liberty. These stories made the news for good reason. They were significant stories that greatly affected life on campus and also had implications for communities outside of Liberty. They also took up so much space and time whenever they would happen. Trump’s Convocation was a topic of conversation for weeks after the event happened; Falwell’s Islamaphobic comments rang out in the news and around campus through winter finals week and into Christmas break; and the election became a significant motivation for most of the work myself and my friends would do in our remaining two years at the school. It feels incredibly relevant and important to rehearse some of those stories in my narration of my time at Liberty because they’re some of the stories that are top of mind when I think back to life at Liberty.
And yet only retelling these stories and neglecting some of the more mundane and everyday elements of my life in Lynchburg would be a poor representation of my experiences. In fact, I so often found myself frustrated with reporting done on Liberty because it always seemed to be looking for the sexy story and never took interest in what it’s really like to truly live in the midst of the madness (with the exception of this piece written by a friend of mine from school). I’m truly grateful for so much of that reporting, but because of the lack of attention to students and their existences on campus, we often carried the weight of the outside culture’s harsh opinion of our school without actually knowing who we were and why we were there. This often resulted in accusatory questions and condescending looks because everyone outside the school always knew better than students did about what was good for us. Dealing with the gawking from outsiders only made it more difficult and alienating when trying to deal with the antics on the inside.
So today I want to write a bit about the mundane life as a student at Liberty. One of the best ways to do that is to describe a couple groups of students who I interacted with on different levels throughout my time at Liberty.
In an earlier story, I talked about my first exposure to Liberty’s Campus Band. The band was full of talented, attractive, and “cool” people. It’s a bit predictable that a college that uses a stage so often would put a set of ideal students on it as much as possible. It’s basic PR because it shows the rest of the world the quality of students while also giving the students a particular figure to aspire to be. Maybe that’s cynical, but the Campus Band was known to have a weeklong audition every year that was incredibly competitive. They weren’t putting just anyone on stage.
But unlike a secular school, there was another element to the influence Campus Band members had on students. Not only were the band members cool and likeable, but they also seemed to have a unique depth of spirituality. It was implied that part of the audition included some sort of spiritual assessment and that making the band meant you had a level of spiritual maturity beyond your years. Before I became disenchanted, I remember taking note of what kinds of things these people would say in between the songs they sang, how they prayed, and what their posture was. I wanted to be like them. This kind of spiritual influence was familiar to many of us who grew up in evangelical circles. We were used to worship leaders and youth pastors influencing the way we held our hands up when singing or the kinds of phrases we would use in public prayer. A large part of evangelical culture is based on imitation. Sure, there’s theology that tells you what to believe, but evangelicalism is just as much a cultural disposition as it is a theological position. You need the help of influencers to know how to conduct yourself in spiritual environments.
Campus Band was not the only group of students on campus who were influencers. Some students came to campus with this kind of influence. For instance, John Luke and Mary Kate Robertson (from Duck Dynasty) began attending the school the same year I did. Just by having the status that they did coming to the school, John Luke quickly became part of the LU Stages team, which worked directly with Nasser as a student hospitality group for the prestigious Convocation speakers. They would eat meals with the speakers before Convocation, show them around campus, and generally serve as the image of Liberty’s best to these powerful people. Some other students were the children of famous pastors or successful businessmen that Liberty had a keen interest in nurturing a relationship with. Like the Robertson’s, these students would be given roles or opportunities that would put them in close proximity to both Nasser and Jerry.
Some of these students did not come from particularly powerful families. However, once they were a part of this group, the entire group seemed to stick closely together. My friends and I would refer to this group as the Liberty Elite, but I’m still not sure if it was a widely shared name for the group or just something we called them. I went to a handful of house parties where they all strolled in together, and it was tradition that at almost any given Liberty sports game you could see members of this group in the President’s Box. I remember a time that I was at a Liberty hockey game. The rink at Liberty isn’t large, and the President’s Box sits at the far right corner of the rink. It’s a typical box with floor length windows, a kitchenette, and a private seating area. About halfway through the first period of the game, I looked over to see Jerry and his wife Becky walking into the box with a group of students to watch the game. I knew of almost every one of the students as being part of the Liberty Elite. It always felt like such a stark contrast as the rest of the students stood in the student section while Jerry and his select group of students looked out over us in their temperature-controlled, refreshment-filled box.
In many ways, these roles that the Liberty Elite held were essential elements to Liberty’s culture. It feels similar to a multi-level marketing company where the company owner highlights the success and lifestyle of the top members to entice people at the bottom. Liberty could offer you an incredible opportunity to meet influential people and foster your passions and talents-- all you had to do was figure out the algorithm to get into the group. This meant that while the Liberty Elite was only a small group of students, there were large swaths of students doing what they could to become like the Elite and failing in the process. This could have been for a multitude of reasons such as not having enough charisma, not having enough money, or not having the right talents to get into the group. Instead, they would spend their four years spinning their wheels in the music program hoping to become worship leaders or try to make friends with others just to climb a social ladder and ultimately get burnt at some point.
Meanwhile, members of the Campus Band would go on to become worship leaders at megachurches with large worship bands while members of the LU Stages team would go on to work for significant politicians or take on influential roles at non-profits. It’s not that every single student on campus wanted to be them-- I certainly wasn’t a worship leader and didn’t want to work for any Republicans-- but everyone was aware of their influence and inordinate amount of access to the two most prominent men at the school. This would become incredibly frustrating when I was beginning to try and get the attention of people like Jerry and Nasser to make changes to the school’s culture. They could easily display themselves as attentive to students by Jerry always bringing students to sports games and Nasser always having students in his office, but in reality they were only listening to one group of people.
While the Liberty Elite’s influence was large, it was not total. However, it took work to find the small areas on campus where one could find shade from the heat of Liberty’s popularity culture. I discovered such an area by scouring the student workers job page when I hoped to pick up a second job. The Writing Center was looking for student writing coaches. I loved writing and figured it would be a fulfilling job as well as one that paid better than my current work at Chipotle, so I sent in an application. Toph, my roommate, had become a writing coach the semester before and seemed to like it pretty well. I was accepted for the position and began in the winter of 2017. While I expected the role to be fulfilling because I would be able to help students with their writing, I had no idea how important the space of the Writing Center would become for me.
The writing coach job was to take 30 minute appointments with students who needed help with their writing. Most of the appointments were scheduled, but some students would drop in. The coaches had one room for active coaching and one room where we would sit while waiting for their appointments. In slower weeks, there would be around six or seven coaches sitting in the waiting room together. It was nice in these weeks because you could go a whole shift with only one or two appointments, which allowed for getting paid while studying or taking a break. Some would do homework while others would chat. Most of the coaches were students in the English program, but there were also a few of us from other programs.
The Writing Center was a place on campus where I felt incredibly safe. So much of my experience at Liberty was feeling different, alien, or abnormal from others around me. And it’s not that the Writing Center was filled with people exactly like me, but rather that the other coaches made me feel normal despite our differences. I know the term “normal” is slippery, but it feels like the best word to describe it. While the coaches all came from different backgrounds and experiences, everyone possessed a couple common qualities: most of the coaches had the job because they needed the money to get through school, most of the coaches entered intellectual conversations with an open mind, and most of the coaches had no interest in the popularity culture at Liberty that was so pervasive outside of the walls of the Writing Center. I mention the financial component because it seemed to have a real impact on how we understood and cared for each other differently. College can easily become a fraught experience when you begin having to pay some bills your parents can’t (or won’t) and you have friends who still get weekly checks or credit cards from their parents. You are simultaneously breaking away from your parents' safety net while navigating the reality of privilege and the embarrassment of having to figure out how to say you can’t come to dinner with friends because you can’t afford it. Because of this, there was a level of solidarity at the Writing Center that was often more implicit than explicitly stated. All the same, it was a place that made me feel safe, and part of that was knowing that I was not alone in the financial struggles of college. And maybe that’s what I mean by “normal.” Maybe it’s just feeling like other people who are very different from you in some ways are also experiencing some similar struggles as you. It is in some ways the sheer surprise of meeting another person and thinking, “I probably won’t get along well with this person” and then falling into a deep friendship with them.
And that is exactly what I found at the Writing Center. It made the Writing Center feel like an oasis in the middle of Liberty’s campus. The Writing Center room was a place where other coaches would come to eat lunch despite the fact that they weren’t working because it was a home base for them. It was a place where we could come and show some emotion that didn’t feel acceptable in classrooms or other spaces on campus. I remember a particularly tumultuous time on campus when a coach was reading an article about Liberty and Falwell’s relationship to Trump after the Charlottesville protests. The coach was so angry he slammed his fists on the desk he was sitting at. While it startled all of us, it also was clear that this was the only space he could begin to process what had happened on campus.
Our working room at the Writing Center became a place full of conversation about Liberty’s culture, current events taking place around the world, and how we fit into it all. While the group had a variety of perspectives, everyone listened to each other so well, and everyone was given an equal place at the table to speak. More than that, it felt like everyone in a conversation respected the other enough to allow them to influence the other on their viewpoints. It was never about gaining clout or dominating a debate when talking with other coaches. Rather, the Writing Center was a place to air grievances about how our professors said crazy things or wrestle through what we thought of the newest antics from Falwell or Trump or any other conservative leader we heard about regularly.
It occurs to me that while so many of those crucial conversations and interactions happened in the waiting room, the work we were doing at the Writing Center played a crucial role in creating the culture that made the space so safe. The coaches were all incredibly smart people who had a genuine desire to help others become better writers. I learned a great deal about writing from all of them, but I also learned a great deal about how to care for someone struggling in an academic situation. There were times where we would all get frustrated with some of the students we worked with, but the energy in the room was overwhelmingly about looking out for others. In many ways, the Writing Center was a place of ritual. Writing itself is a ritual of rhythm and structure– you create a process that works for you and repeat it over and over in order to improve. This was a ritual we practiced, taught, and deeply believed in. (In some sense, this writing project is a ritual in which I intend to put these thoughts on a page so I can put them to rest inside of me.) We were all writers at the Writing Center, and were teaching this ritual to others. I truly believe that was a generator for the kind of culture we created in that space.
It’s difficult to properly describe everything the Writing Center was for me. I think this is because it’s hard to begin to talk about all of the foundational and fundamental questions you begin to ask in your undergrad. Questions about what family you came from and what elements of that family, good or bad, you might have inherited. Questions about the faith you were brought up in and how viable it really is in the adult world away from the comfort of your family. Questions about everything from intimate relationships to the fate of the world. In an ideal world, an academic institution would have given me ample space to explore these questions as I also worked through my courses and education (they are, I would argue, inextricably intertwined). Liberty wasn’t this ideal world, and even the Writing Center didn’t necessarily give me all the space I needed for these questions. However, it was a really bright light in comparison to what I experienced in the rest of the student culture.
The Liberty Elite and the coaches at the Writing Center feel to me like the two poles of the student culture at Liberty. While the school wasn’t tiny, I would interact with both of these groups on campus on a daily basis. The Liberty Elite was entranced by evangelicalism’s consumer culture and enticed by the prospect of being a part of producing what so many of their peers consumed. Meanwhile, the Writing Center coaches were building a small community of their own. This community was founded on helping each other through a hard time and celebrating each other’s successes. Not overly interested in class or status, but rather in curiosity and wonder at the new things they were learning.
I understand that this contrast might feel so stark that it’s unbelievable. And in some ways, you might be right. I’m writing this from memory, and this is how my brain has decided to remember the two groups. But even while it might be a dramatized version in my memory, I remember some true stories that illustrate this contrast. For instance, one of the writing coaches would regularly bring in a Campbell’s Chunky Soup for lunch every day. He would always let us know which were his favorite, but was willing to try them all. And every time I think about his soup lunches, I’m reminded of the LU Stages office that sat across campus from the Writing Center. In the office, Nasser had an industrial drink cooler for him, his staff, and his guests. I know this because when I went to his office he offered me a drink. The cooler held the regular sodas along with a surprising selection of Bai drinks. And it never misses me that while my friend in the Writing Center could only afford a Campbell’s soup for lunch with his student worker job, there were student workers across the campus who were offered specialty drinks that cost more than a can of Campbell’s soup for free. The disparity is dizzying.
But it’s important to note that the harm didn’t come because the individuals in the Liberty Elite were regularly and explicitly lording their privilege over Writing Center coaches. That’s not how Liberty’s culture worked. Instead, the harmful elements of the student culture were the systems of inequality that existed along race, gender, and class lines at the university. It’s not one person’s fault for being popular on campus, but rather the way the school lifted up these popular individuals over and over while leaving others on their own. This can also be seen in how Liberty essentially used the tuition money of Liberty Online students to pay for campus renovations. The Liberty Online program, for the record, is notoriously predatory and bad despite their high enrollments. Ultimately, the contrast between the Liberty Elite and the Writing Center coaches is just one focal point in a vast network of relationships between students, faculty, and staff where consumption, status, and class are rewarded over everything.
After writing this piece, I think I know now why the press often leaves these stories of the student culture at Liberty alone. It’s because of the immense complexity of any campus culture among students, let alone at Liberty. In comparing these two groups, my goal was to articulate at least a bit of the dissonance of simply walking around campus at any given moment. With every new interview Falwell did on the news, more political struggles hovered over the campus. But there were also troubles on the ground in wrestling with the mundane questions of a 20 year old while surrounded by a hyper-moralized and hyper-image focused campus culture. This is an important point because some narratives of Liberty have figured Falwell as the singular issue at Liberty. However, the issues at Liberty run much deeper than Falwell himself. They are a cancer that has spread throughout the entire student and faculty body, and that’s why I’m sure many of the same issues I faced as a student continue to plague students attending Liberty today, even without Falwell.
A few of the writing coaches played important roles in editing Toph’s Liberty United Against Trump statement as well as an op-ed written in the Washington Post, but the Writing Center was not necessarily the focal point of our organizing efforts on campus. And yet, many of these coaches inspired the work we did. This is one of the things I’ve come to appreciate about the process of organizing. You don’t have to get on a soap box in a crowded square to make a difference. Sometimes it’s the ideas you exchange over dinner or in a writing room that lead to actions of change. In fact, one of the more formative experiences of my time at Liberty was spurred by conversations among some writing coaches in the wake of a pastor being led off campus by Liberty’s Police Department. My conversation led me to confront Nasser in his office. But that’s a story for another time.
The Syllabus
Pew - This short little novel was an incredibly potent read for anyone who has grown up in some sort of fundamentalist upbringing. It’s a genuinely uncomfortable read, and one that raises a lot of questions without fully answering them. Thanks to Larissa and Paige for the recommendation.
The Nowhere Inn - I saw this film described as “metafiction” which seems the only proper way to describe it. It is a film about making a documentary, which might or might not have happened in real life? It puts ideas of truth, fiction, and authenticity into dialogue with one another all while remaining hilarious.
Jesus and John Wayne and Mel Gibson’s William Wallace from the Movie Braveheart - I would apologize for recommending another of Anne Helen Petersen’s newsletters, but they’re just so great. This particular interview was fascinating to me on multiple leves, but the second half is where it gets the best. If you listen to the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast, this interview provides some really crucial critiques and analysis while also giving a lot of other important overview.
Listen to songs on a rainy morning - After seeing Adrienne Lenker live this summer, I haven’t been able to stop listening to this album. But it becomes even better and more potent on a rainy morning.
The Tip Jar
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