Week 1 Update

Only 7 days after launching, Save OBU is already going strong.  Here are some highlights:

• We've had >360 page views
• We're on Twitter (follow us @SaveOBU_Blog)
• We have 15 "likes" on our Facebook page, including students, alumni, Shawnee-area residents, and friends (I'd love to double that number by the time students leave for Christmas Break)
• I've strategized with moderate Baptist leaders, and look forward to making contact with many more
• I've planned a month's worth of blog posts to get us into the new year
• We have ads on Google and Facebook to increase our visibility and reach (email SaveOBU@gmail.com if you can contribute $30 to this effort)

Here's what you can do:

1. Retweet our blog posts
2. Like us on Facebook
3. Share the site with all your non-fundamentalist friends and classmates
4. And most importantly, email me at SaveOBU@gmail.com.  I want to hear your stories.  We all love OBU, but we all know it is going through a hard time as administrators crack down in personnel and policy decisions to appease an increasingly fundamentalist state convention.

For some reason, I have a completely irrational amount of passion about this one issue.  BGCO control is the root of so many problems at OBU.  It was bad enough when I was there from 1999-2002: moderate professors favoring early retirement over fights with administration, censorship of student journalism, a prevailing authoritarian ethos, etc.  But at least I got a good education and was encouraged to think for myself.  Today's students are having those opportunities restricted.  We owe it to them and to future generations to stand up for OBU's proud liberal arts tradition.

So far, leading this effort has been exhilarating rather than exhausting.  But I am looking to recruit leaders for this effort among students, alumni, retired faculty, and, eventually, BGCO messengers and major OBU donors.  Please be in touch.

Jacob