Two points I want to make. Rez, while perhaps insulting to some, isn't wrong when he says Valpo students today are 1000 percent different than students from any other generation. Why that is the case is a question the university needs to solve. I've been teaching for 20 years and this current group is unlike any I've ever been in front of before. I know I've written about this here before, but I do an exercise during a Public Relations lecture where I ask each student to go around the room and say in a word or two why they're attending Valpo. Some maybe say academics, proximity to home, proximity away from home, family members, athletics, etc. etc. I haven't had a student list religion as their primary reason for coming to Valpo in years. That's not to say that I don't have religious students. It's just not the primary focus from these students. These students are also being pulled in a million different directions AWAY from campus. I had one student break down in my office because their parents wanted to talk to them every single day. It's not that they don’t love their parents, they just want some space to grow up. These students aren't getting that right now with the ability to constantly be connected to a life away from campus every second of the day. I know I've written of this before, but the idea of "going away to school" might happen in the physical/geographic, but it's not happening in the mental.
I say all that to say this...it is still working in certain places. I had the pleasure of attending the Cornell/Harvard hockey match last weekend in Ithaca. The student section was packed. They were doing the same cheers that had been passed down from generations before them. Watching Valpo men's basketball over the recent years as students sit in the student section and the ARC has to rely on chairbacks to make noise, I almost thought that the days of school spirit in college were gone. Cornell hasn't lost it. Here's hoping Valpo can find it again.
Just my two cents.
I agree with @rezynezy to some extent. Students in reality are less concerned in religious affiliation and religion content at universities than they were 30 years ago. A lot of these universities my bud 62 listed are affiliated with faith but do not apply or emphasize it as much as they did in the past. SMU and TCU are excellent examples of that.
Valpo should be faith based, don’t get me wrong. But religious affiliation is not as critical in college decision making.
I think, as usual on this board, Rez assumes his college search was the way every college search is conducted, and that his deciding factors were everyone’s.
A Lutheran identity isn’t just liturgy and lyrics. It’s about access to education. It’s “everyone a teacher.” It’s about a personal connection with God. These are things Valpo desperately needs to maintain, and it’s things that college students of this generation DO want. Why are we so quick to globalize the experience and perceptions of one poster who didn’t go to Valpo? I would much rather hear from today’s students, but the university doesn’t do an awesome job of sharing those stories beyond the admissions pipeline. (At least, I HOPE prospective students are hearing from current students…)
Whether or not today's students have the same OPK passions, Valpo can ignore the values of those donors at your peril as they are in prime giving years. One donor found the chapel important enough to give $15M in 2011. He is in that age group. If you think the center building on campus is irrelevant or shows a less preferred identity, smoke on that one (the size of gift) for a minute or two. Has he given big again since 2011? He left the board.
On the strategic enrollment side, students and parents have hundreds of choices in the list of secular colleges. So where is the strategic advantage in diluting your identity. Why discard the positives of faith in the USA so noted by Alexander DeToqueville to students has less traffic. Maybe you could even teach it? Yes, this is an old dialog on this board. But the discussion is now existential for VU in 2024. Quite simply, beggars cant be choosers. You are choosing between a donor-funded direction and a secular direction that so far has not publicly shown any ability to attract big gifts. By the way, Homer's faith also seemed not to turn off athletes or students.
Haven't really paid attention much to this thread but noticed a couple of conceptual arguments that I thought I should chime in on. One, in response to @rezynezy, I think he gets some stuff right and some stuff wrong. Yeah, I agree that Rez might be generalizing his experience to our generation as a whole but he's not necessarily wrong with that. Our generation overall is significantly less religious (check the stats if you don't believe me) than past generations and the current Valpo student body is the same way. However, that does not mean that no one in our generation is religious. Even on Valpo's campus there is a strong percentage of the student body who might look a little more like the OPK days that many here wish we were still in. Wednesday night contemporary chapel service is the largest weekly student-run event on campus, and often draws close to 100 students despite being at 10 pm on a school night. But those students are just taking advantage of the faith-based activities that Valpo offers; I also have never heard anyone here say faith is the #1 reason that they came to Valpo because even the students like me who are extremely involved in the Chapel or in faith life recognize that faith is not one of Valpo's strongest suits.
There are definitely still Christian students here, but even then Valpo can also not be compared to Liberty or GCU or other religious institutions whatsoever. At those schools students flock there for the #1 reason being that they are Christian schools. That's because Christianity is infused into every aspect of those campuses. Those suggesting here that Valpo should lean into Lutheran values more from an administrative standpoint are only exacerbating the current problem. Right now, I'm sure the administration would say we are leaning into our values, because look, we got a new motto! we're grounded in faith! We are saying we are religious or Lutheran or something but that doesn't reflect any changes on campus. To become a Liberty or GCU model of attracting Christian students, we'd actually have to start acting like one everywhere on campus which requires a massive culture shift that seems impossible under any sort of administration like this which is nominally Christian but in practice looks no different from a secular university.
Valpo is in a spiritually ambivalent position right now, reflected by a lot of this forum. It has many students that care about their faith, and just as many/if not more that don't care at all. It has people who wish we were still strong Lutheran like we were decades ago, and people who think that the way forward is without that faith. If Valpo is to continue as a religious institution, it is going to require people to make faith-based decisions, not decisions about faith. I hope that can happen, but the way we are going, I'm not seeing it.
I haven't had a student list religion as their primary reason for coming to Valpo in years. That's not to say that I don't have religious students. It's just not the primary focus from these students.
Watching Valpo men's basketball over the recent years as students sit in the student section and the ARC has to rely on chairbacks to make noise, I almost thought that the days of school spirit in college were gone.
Primary focus, is the key phrase here. If I were asked that as a freshman I certainly wouldn't have said religion or faith as the answer. As for spirit at basketball games, I think there are two primary problems. The first is ESPN+ which allows us all to sit at home and watch Valpo athletics anytime we want. In our glory days that certainly wasn't a choice and getting on national tv seemed like a big deal! The quality of opponents and more importantly our lack of winning is probably the biggest issue. Bring Butler in or Rhode Island or Florida State or Purdue and then have a chance of winning and I'm pretty sure the seats would be full again.
There are many thoughtful posts and ideas expressed above.
The good news is that I don't think this has to be a binary choice of fundamentalist Christian or entirely secular. I do not see (and have not seen) anyone seriously arguing for an all-in fundamentalist sort of approach for VU's future. For example, I can't imagine VU becoming a Liberty, Bob Jones or Oral Roberts University. In contrast, I can see a path for VU to thrive in attracting students similar those who are attracted to Jesuit schools. (This would be schools like Marquette, Creighton, Xavier, Fordham, or Gonzaga). There are other non-Jesuit schools that have a distinct faith component that also would be welcoming to students for many reasons - think Notre Dame or Baylor.
I would guess that if you asked today's undergrads why they chose to attend Georgetown or Gonzaga, they might not mention their faith first. I looked it up, and 41% of Georgetown's students are Catholic. Could VU be the Lutheran version of Notre Dame, Georgetown, Baylor or Saint Louis? That would be a vision that many people and (potential students) could support.
It was not my intent to say "no one is religious" in the gen-z or gen- alpha community. To claim I said this is a gross marginalization of my words. I also never said that Valpo needed to become some hippie-dippie school that spits on religion and burns down the chapel. Which is what some seem to have taken my words to mean. Religion, for a majority of college age students, is not a critical factor in where they attend school any more. Could it still be a factor for some? Absolutely, you have every right to make college decisions based on the criteria you see fit. But, its as Paul said, in VUs case, and in many cases of religious privates around the country, that isn't going to be your catch 21 of why you attended. Please point your attention to VUIndiana's post and Paul's post. That is almost perfect in explaining the reality of Christian higher ed.(and most of you would be more inclined to listen to them than some "stupid kid who doesn't understand anything").
There is no definition to what a "religious identity" is. To schools like BYU, Bob Jones, ORU, that term means required church service, strict dress codes, curfew, ect. This is drastically different to the definition one would get from ND, Gonzaga, Butler, Evansville, ect... I would also not consider GCU and Liberty to be upstanding examples of the Christian education. Considering that GCU is a for profit institution and Liberty is on its way there. Degree cuts don't just happen on a whim. They happen because of declining interest in those classes among students so there is, in an institutions mind, no reason to offer them in the first place. However, this is a different can of worms to open.
No I am not assuming "my college search was the same as everyone else's". These are very real stats that you can look up, and even instructor testimonies on here can tell you that religion is not a "key factor" as much as it was anymore. Once again. Do these kids exist, yes, but, again, you are looking for needles in haystacks. I agree with VUIndiana in saying that donors/community have been narrow in their harkening back to some sort of "glory days". You Balk at me and claim that I generalized my college search to everyone's, when you made generalizations about OPK era principles to everyone's opinions and claimed that there should be a focus on these principles when modern students BIL just don't care that a school offers a "Lutheran education" as opposed to a "Catholic Education" or a "Jesuit Education" or a "Christian Education".
Yes, the Chapel is a major icon of not just VU, but of Valparaiso as a whole. The 2 things you see when entering town from SR-2 is the court house on the hill, and the pediment of the chapel. But you know what the chapel isn't, a building that services Lutherans and Lutherans alone. I have many years of service time at Tuba Christmas to prove that much. It is very possible to offer both a religious experience, and an experience that welcomes people from all walks of life at a Chapel or even an institution of higher ed. A donor should be able to acknowledge and welcome that. If not, they are just stuck in their own ways and projecting their experience onto others (Which once again, I was criticized here for allegedly doing). Valpo does offer an education beyond the hymnal for example, my mother, Who is a VU grad, attended because of proximity to home, and the stellar social work and psychology program offered at VU. She is and always has been Roman Catholic. To claim that VU has lost its religions affiliations is laughable.
My earlier response to Rez was predicated on two things which I would like to sharpen and reaffirm, because, as often happens we got sidetracked to debating Religious philosophy and I’d like to get away from discussing tree species and focus on the forest:
>> The insinuation that the OPK generation is no longer in touch with today’s reality was wrong.
>> A faith-based (note my use of lower case here) educational environment provides a crucible for producing the best in every student no matter where that set of values emanates from (be it established religions like Lutheranism, Catholicism, or whatever, or just a sense of the spiritual such as that which our native American forebears practiced).
Our generation (yes, I graduated in ‘66) has watched our kids and grandkids move through multiple education cycles. And cheered them at every step. We’ve seen the evolution of higher education and understood it as necessary and important to adjust to change. The “OPK generation” does not want to reestablish the 60’s ( though those were great times to grow up). It wants to support institutions that practice solid business decisions in higher education, adjusts to the changing world, coupled with a sense of a firm identity that differentiates Valpo from vanilla institutions with bland, if any, values.
Yeah, today’s students at Notre Dame, Boston College, Gonzaga, GCU, Liberty. Presbyterian, Marist, St. Mary’s, Creighton, Iona, Loyola (all of them), TCU, SMU, Baylor, Indiana Wesleyan, ORU, University of St. Thomas, Wake Forest, Villanova, …….and the list goes on and on, certainly reject religious values, theology and music (WTF?) Yeah, right.
Wake up. Today’s kids are desperately searching for those few islands where they can explore themselves, their world, the outside world, and feel free to share thoughts and ideas in a nonjudgmental environment while learning how to think independently. Institutions like Valpo provide that place - and part of that is the faith-based values that permeate a campus like Valpo.
Look, I haven’t seen the inside of a church for worship in many decades. I very much align with the non-“religious“ spiritual realm and see God in every sunset, every living being, that sort of thing. And, Paul, if I was in your class and you asked me, I would not have said that I came to Valpo because I wanted a Lutheran education (what is that anyway?). I came to Valpo to play football, dammit, get a great, personalized education (duh, that’s why you go to college), and feel comfortable with students, who like me, felt the core values of humanity that are so much a part of the Valpo campus. No labels, just a vibe. And I am so much the better for it.
Well if anything, the traditional push by some to emphasize Valpo being a German Lutheran school will lead to its downfall. We need a diverse student body with respecting and taking advantage that Valpo is a faith based university (e.g. start with golden rule principles and actions amongst the campus community).
My earlier response to Rez was predicated on two things which I would like to sharpen and reaffirm, because, as often happens we got sidetracked to debating Religious philosophy and I’d like to get away from discussing tree species and focus on the forest:
>> The insinuation that the OPK generation is no longer in touch with today’s reality was wrong.
>> A faith-based (note my use of lower case here) educational environment provides a crucible for producing the best in every student no matter where that set of values emanates from (be it established religions like Lutheranism, Catholicism, or whatever, or just a sense of the spiritual such as that which our native American forebears practiced).
Our generation (yes, I graduated in ‘66) has watched our kids and grandkids move through multiple education cycles. And cheered them at every step. We’ve seen the evolution of higher education and understood it as necessary and important to adjust to change. The “OPK generation” does not want to reestablish the 60’s ( though those were great times to grow up). It wants to support institutions that practice solid business decisions in higher education, adjusts to the changing world, coupled with a sense of a firm identity that differentiates Valpo from vanilla institutions with bland, if any, values.
Yeah, today’s students at Notre Dame, Boston College, Gonzaga, GCU, Liberty. Presbyterian, Marist, St. Mary’s, Creighton, Iona, Loyola (all of them), TCU, SMU, Baylor, Indiana Wesleyan, ORU, University of St. Thomas, Wake Forest, Villanova, …….and the list goes on and on, certainly reject religious values, theology and music (WTF?) Yeah, right.
Wake up. Today’s kids are desperately searching for those few islands where they can explore themselves, their world, the outside world, and feel free to share thoughts and ideas in a nonjudgmental environment while learning how to think independently. Institutions like Valpo provide that place - and part of that is the faith-based values that permeate a campus like Valpo.
Look, I haven’t seen the inside of a church for worship in many decades. I very much align with the non-“religious“ spiritual realm and see God in every sunset, every living being, that sort of thing. And, Paul, if I was in your class and you asked me, I would not have said that I came to Valpo because I wanted a Lutheran education (what is that anyway?). I came to Valpo to play football, dammit, get a great, personalized education (duh, that’s why you go to college), and feel comfortable with students, who like me, felt the core values of humanity that are so much a part of the Valpo campus. No labels, just a vibe. And I am so much the better for it.
Sounds like Pelagianism or Gnosticism.
Well if anything, the traditional push by some to emphasize Valpo being a German Lutheran school will lead to its downfall.
My sense is that it is exactly the opposite conclusion - at least part of the the downfall in enrollment is because a lack of emphasis and outreach to its traditional core of students and families who no longer come to VU.
President Harre was well-respected in the LCMS circles and made a point to maintain as well as possible VU's traditional LCMS constituency. Harre was an ordained LCMS pastor, and also hired people like William Karpenko as director of church relations.
President Heckler was the first non-LCMS president in VU's modern history, and during his tenure VU moved away from that model model. President Padilla is obviously not Lutheran. Students are voting with their feet - to put some numbers to this, in the Fall of 2009, there were 496 LCMS students enrolled at VU, and in the Fall of 2024, there were 51 LCMS students enrolled.
@joker 😀 and there ya go, applying a label(s). Actually, you’re not too far off (I had to look up Pelagianism🙄). After growing up through a Missouri Synod Lutheran grade school, Concordia Prep (NY), and then Valpo, I grew to appreciate a more subtle view of what I was given. Still would not have traded my four years at Valpo for another experience. I hope the kids today walk away with their degrees thinking the same thing.
