Dr. Ben Carson to Headline 2014 Green & Gold Gala

After taking the controversial step to sue the federal government over the Affordable Care Act's requirement that certain religious institutions cover contraceptives in their group health insurance plans, one might think OBU would lay low in the culture wars for a while.

Instead, administrators have upped the ante with a move that's sure to shock and offend many faculty, students, and alumni.

Today in Broken Arrow, President David Whitlock boasted in his report to the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma's annual meeting that OBU has invited Dr. Ben Carson to keynote next year's Green & Gold Gala, a fundraiser for student scholarships.

For those outside the religious right political movement who may not know of him, Ben Carson is a retired neurosurgeon who catapulted to fame for delivering a speech slamming many of President Obama's policies to his face at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year.  After disrespecting the president in the most obnoxious and defiant way possible, Dr. Carson became a Tea Party celebrity.  The Wall Street Journal editorial page urged him to run for president.

At last month's Values Voter Summit in Washington (the premier political convention of the most far-right elements of the Republican Party -- even the SBC considers the event too extreme to endorse), Carson was the runner-up in the straw poll for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.  He tied former Senator Rick Santorum with 13% apiece.  Senator Ted Cruz won with 42% of the vote.

In his speech to the Values Voter Summit, Carson made a particularly offensive statement: the health insurance reform law is "the worst thing to happen in this country since slavery."  Translation: The Affordable Care Act is worse than poverty, natural disasters, the Great Depression, segregation, child abuse, and tens of millions of abortions.  To Dr. Carson, the Affordable Care Act is even worse than 9/11.  What an insult!

However much money OBU raises for scholarships, it will pay a hefty fee to Carson.  According to his booking agent, his speaking fee is "over $40,000."  It's probably significantly more than that.  Carson has a remarkable personal story of rising from poverty to become chief of pediatric neurosurgery at one of the world's finest hospitals.  He is a highly sought after speaker.  Even so, Carson's calendar has opened up a bit as he has had to withdraw from several engagements in the wake of offensive comments.

Earlier this year, he withdrew from giving the commencement speech at Johns Hopkins University and from another speech to a medial industry group.  Petitions against Carson circulated after he equated homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality.  Does this reflect the views and values of OBU administrators?  Compared to Dr. Carson, last April's controversial "ex gay" evangelist chapel speaker Christopher Yuan seems downright compassionate!

Last year's inaugural Green & Gold Gala speaker, Tony Dungy, also holds traditional views.  But Dungy has a much more humble and modest persona, and I saw no need to protest his selection.

This year, I hope the OBU community will have a robust discussion about whether a figure as controversial as Dr. Carson truly reflects the consensus values of the OBU community.

When I was at OBU and Bill Clinton was president, I was taught that no matter how much I disliked him or disapproved of his actions, I should respect him and his office.  If a liberal  had so openly and shockingly denounced President George W. Bush to his face, do you think OBU would invite that person to speak?

To try to speak to Tea Partiers who will be glad to hear about Carson speaking at an OBU event and who say, "What's the big deal?" I asked a few liberal friends who the liberal counterpart to Ben Carson would be.  They said, "Imagine a person with political views left of Nancy Pelosi and who is as obnoxious as Michael Moore."  Think about how you would feel if OBU administrators invited such a person to headline the Green & Gold Gala.

Last year's event, by all accounts, avoided culture war politics.  Big sponsors of the gala included businesses, churches, BGCO organizations and affiliates, and a few wealthy individuals.  Next year's gala is sure to be highly politicized.  Aside from whatever comments Dr. Carson makes, it seems likely that Oklahoma political insiders will gobble up tickets and sponsorships for a chance to meet their anti-Obama hero.

I truly don't think they could have come up with a more partisan or divisive speaker if they tried.

At a minimum, whoever selected Carson should be asked whether they agree with his implication that homosexuality is tantamount to pedophilia and bestiality and that Obamacare is worse than 9/11, though I'm a little afraid of the answer.

The event is scheduled for next spring, assuming the keynoter does not make any extremely offensive remarks in the meantime.  Although, it's hard to imagine what comments would disqualify Carson if the things he has already said are acceptable.

In the future, we probably shouldn't let the College Republicans run the university.  Or the College Democrats (if such a thing is even allowed to exist).  I declined to criticize the trustees for acquiescing to President Whitlock's desire to join in a lawsuit against the federal government, since I thought they were simply trying to protect OBU's autonomy and prerogative even though the suit is harmful and offensive to all female employees on the group health insurance plan.  But after this Ben Carson debacle, it would be nice for the trustees to reassure OBU students, employees, and alumni that there are actually some grown-ups in charge on Bison Hill.

[Ed. I am still in complete disbelief that the reports I heard today from Oklahoma Baptist pastors are true.  If any mistakes in reporting were made, I will immediately withdraw this post.]

The Center Cannot Hold

Cedarville University Series
Part 1 - Cedarville: A Very Brief Introduction
Part 2 - The Worst are Filled with Passionate Intensity
Part 3 - Things Fall Apart

Part 4 - The Center Cannot Hold

On Saturday, the Board of Trustees ruled in favor of Carl Ruby’s forced resignation and the elimination of the philosophy major. Trustees Chris Williamson and Bill Rudd have resigned from the Board in protest of this ruling. At the moment, Michael Loftis remains on the Board, but Provost John Gredy has announced that the university is conducting an internal review about his failure to investigate sexual abuse allegations at ABWE, and an official statement will be released when the review is complete. Donn Ketcham, the pedophiliac missionary doctor responsible for the abuse, still held an honorary doctorate from the University as of last week; that doctorate has been officially revoked. 

As far as we know, there is also no investigation into the sexual abuse of male students by retired professors Ed Spencer and David Robey.

The Board of Trustees and the Cedarvilly faculty also voted unanimously to approve the following doctrinal statement:

“We believe in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as verbally inspired by God and inerrant in the original writings, embracing all matters which the biblical authors address, and believe that they are of supreme and final authority in faith and life. This unwavering commitment to the Word of God and testimony of Jesus Christ binds together our past and present and must shape our future so that we might be a beacon for, and not a pale reflection of, the world around us.”

These decisions are the result of a fraught weekend that witnessed frantic final appeals for justice and transparency by concerned alumni and students. With few exceptions, these appeals were not well received. Dr. Robert Sumner, trustee emeritus, authored a long-winded reply to my own email to the Board. In it, he bragged of his fundamentalist credentials and his continued influence on the board, and accused me of not understanding what ‘fundamentalism’ really means.

When I explained that I did in fact understand what fundamentalism means, and that I had chosen to reject it specifically because I understood it, Dr. Sumner told me that he hoped my parents died before they found out about my decision.

If Sumner’s email to me is any indication of Cedarville’s future trajectory, then it is likely that Cedarville University will continue to sacrifice academic freedom in favor of Biblical literalism. The faction steering this shift do not see this as a substantive change in the university’s character. According to Robert Sumner, Cedarville has always been a fundamentalist institution; he wrote of its former presidents in heroic terms and expected that heroism to be shared by students and recent alumni. Here, the generation gap is most glaring. I, and the majority of my class, did not choose Cedarville for its fundamentalist reputation. Mentions of Cedarville’s former presidents largely met with apathy, when these mentions were made at all.

The well-organized opposition to the administration’s decisions ought to demonstrate how little support exists for a fundamentalist university. We organized to defend the robustly evangelical university we actually encountered, not the politicized, reductionist vision of men like Robert Sumner.

Last week, thousands of Christians flocked to the annual Justice Conference, held in Philadelphia this year. The Justice Conference is true to its name: its emphasis is social justice, particularly economic and racial justice. This year, speakers included Shane Claiborne, once decried by fundamentalists as being ‘too liberal’ to speak on the campus of Cedarville University. Despite this history a delegation of Cedarville students attended the conference. A Cedarville professor who accompanied them reported the average age of all conference attendees to be no more than 27. Robert Sumner, Lorne Scharnberg and their fellow ideologues have already lost the war. They have lost my generation.

Dr. Carl Ruby cared deeply about social justice. Dr. David Mills and his colleague Dr. Shawn Graves combined their own concern for social justice with serious philosophical enquiry. That’s why petitions to reinstate them received over 2000 signatures combined. And as long as fundamentalists associate that same passion for justice with doctrinal heresy, they doom themselves to failure. This controversy at Cedarville is America’s culture war in microcosm. It’s a one-sided affair, waged by fundamentalists against the rest of the world. Academic freedom, transparency and even simple compassion are collateral damage in their crusade to control the definition of Christian identity in the 21^st century.

But today, I informed the Board of Trustees that alumni would not surrender. We will continue to speak out against fundamentalism. We still wait for answers about Michael Loftis, Dave Robey and Ed Spencer. And I wait, too, for answers about the assault that irrevocably changed my life.

In the meantime, I recall the Cedarville Admissions team’s promise to all freshmen: that at Cedarville University, you become part of a family. You gain ‘friends for life.’ And that is not a lie. My Cedarville family is motley: intelligent and impassioned, compassionate and curious. Its members are truly my friends for life. For this much I give thanks, and I keep the faith, in humanity if not in God.


Editor's Note: Thanks to our guest blogger, Cedarville University alumna Sarah Jones.  Sarah had complete editorial control over the series and we thank her for her thoughtful, passionate writing.  Article titles are derived from ‘TheSecond Coming’ by William Butler Yeats. On behalf of the entire Save OBU community, I warmly welcome to you our little corner of the web. Check out other parts of the site and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  See especially our recent post asking, in light of problems at many member institutions: Where is the CCCU?!  Over the past 15 months as we've documented fundamentalist encroachment at Oklahoma Baptist University, we've learned that some of our peer institutions have it far worse. Our thoughts and prayers are with each of you. Please join us in standing for academic freedom and ethical administration in evangelical higher education.

Things Fall Apart

Cedarville University Series
Part 1 - Cedarville: A Very Brief Introduction
Part 2 - The Worst are Filled with Passionate Intensity
Part 3 - Things Fall Apart

Part 4 - The Center Cannot Hold

After the Cedars controversy, I spent a semester overseas. By the time I returned to campus, I’d started dating the son of a high-ranking staff member. Though not a student, he had free access to campus, and eventually got a short-term job at the university due to his father’s connections. That relationship should have been a mere footnote to my Cedarville story, but like so many college relationships, it became abusive. My ex, a recovering drug and alcohol addict, started drinking again, and I became the target for his anger.

Abusive dating relationships aren’t unique to Cedarville. What sets Cedarville apart is its campus culture, defined by events like the one I criticized in my Cedars article. Women are sexualized, but restricted from sexual behavior. They are the gatekeepers of sexual purity, charged with dressing modestly in order to prevent male lust.

So it’s probably no surprise, then, that when my ex’s abuse escalated to attempted rape, one of my first thoughts (after the humiliation and fear) involved the modesty panel I’d criticized. Specifically, I remembered a male classmate’s assertion that women should not wear pajama pants in public, because that made men think about bed, which made them think about sex.

My boyfriend tried to rape me while I was wearing pajamas. And at the time, I couldn’t shake the deep-seated conviction that I’d brought it upon myself.

This isn’t easy to write. I write it because I believe it’s necessary. I write it because I want you to understand why I, and so many others, have spoken so extensively about Carl Ruby’s compassion. It is because his compassion stands in stark contrast to the treatment many of us received at Cedarville. We speak about the philosophy professors, Dr. Mills and his colleague, Dr. Shawn Graves, because they encouraged students to think critically about ethics and faith. Cedarville needs that, too.

In the days that followed the assault, I became severely depressed, but I told no one about the attack. I feared retribution, and for several months, I found the event too traumatic to revisit. I did go to Dr. Ruby and others about different aspects of the abuse. And though my abuser faced no consequences for his actions, he, Dr. Mills and other faculty members who have since moved on from Cedarville deserve credit for showing me the emotional support that helped me move on and begin to heal.

Cedarville’s refusal to punish my abuser alerted me to the depths of the corruption in Cedarville’s administration. When I received word this past fall that a Bible professor had been fired for his interpretation of Genesis, that the philosophy major could be cut, and that Dr. Ruby could lose his job, I credited these decisions to these same deeply rooted failures in leadership. These failures became evident to many when the university officially announced its plans.

The backlash stumbled to life when the university fired Dr. Michael Pahl. The reason: Pahl, a literalist, proved not quite literalist enough to suit Dr. Tom Cornman, the fundamentalist academic vice president. Dr. Cornman had recently authored a then-secret series of white papers that codified the university’s doctrinal position, beyond the statement publicly available on the university’s website.

Dr. Cornman and the provost, Dr. John Gredy, also a fundamentalist, later led the charge to eliminate Cedarville’s philosophy major. Neither publicly stated an ideological motivation behind their decision, but behind the scenes, bias tainted every administrative move.

Last month, Cedars thoroughly documented the flaws in the review and appeal processes as applied to the philosophy program. The rushed review process and the obscured rationale behind it fuelled student and alumni concerns that this signalled an imminent fundamentalist takeover of the university. When Carl Ruby announced his unexpected resignation on January 10th, those fears seemed to be confirmed. The resignation seemed especially suspicious after Christianity Today revealed that Dr. Ruby had already undergone a hearing in the fall, and that Lorne Scharneberg, chairman of the Board of Trustees, denied the hearing ever occurred. After twenty-five years of service to the university, Dr. Ruby was forced to leave campus five days after his public resignation. Conveniently, a non-disclosure agreement forbade him from revealing the true reasons for his departure. The conditions of Dr. Ruby’s resignation have prompted one trustee, Chris Williamson, to publicly call for his reinstatement.

During a topical Town Hall chaired by Dr. Gredy, he and Dr. Cornman misrepresented the true number of students enrolled in philosophy courses at the university, and generally avoided specific student concerns about the philosophy major and Dr. Ruby’s resignation. In the wake of the university’s decisions, petitions to reinstate Dr. Ruby and revive the philosophy program received 1071 and 1170 signatures respectively. Either petition by itself dwarfs an older petition about Hoffeditz’s termination. Combined, they represent a thriving opposition to fundamentalist encroachment at Cedarville University.

That opposition has been bolstered by the revelation that trustee Michael Loftis had been forced to abandon the presidency of the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE) for failures in leadership. The failure? Although victims first informed Loftis about the activities of a pedophile missionary doctor in 2002, Loftis did not launch any sort of investigation into the crimes until 2011. Loftis remains a trustee and the pedophile, though now dead, still posthumously holds an honorary doctorate from Cedarville.

Loftis is not the only trustee charged with covering up child molestation. Trustee Bill Williams resigned from his position as the superintendent of Worthington Christian Schools in 2008 after it was revealed that he had a hired a known child molester to teach at the school.

To our further dismay, an open letter by Dr. David Olsen, Cedarville graduate and co-founder of Cedarville Out, described the sexual harassment of male students by now retired Professor Ed Spencer, and the sexual harassment and abuse of other male students by former professor, Dr. David Robey. The incidents span decades.

The male victims of Dr. Spencer and Dr. Robey encountered the same cultural obstacles that I did, complicated by the school’s strident homophobia. We had few allies, and reporting the full scale of the abuse seemed impossible. We each found ourselves marginalized by the university’s culture of silence. That culture of silence protects Michael Loftis and Bill Williams. It is responsible for the tactics used to remove Carl Ruby, Michael Pahl, David Mills and Shawn Graves from their positions. It benefits only the fundamentalists who enforce it in order to protect their vision of Cedarville University. Their vision leaves no space for debate or for compassion shown to the marginalized. It does not include justice for gay and lesbian students, or, it seems, for feminist student journalists.

I am 25 years old. I hold a master’s degree from Goldsmiths, University of London, and last month I went public about my assault. My abuser, who also attacked another female student, is currently under investigation by the university. At the moment, there are no investigations into the claims regarding Dr. Spencer and Dr. Robey.

On Thursday evening, we received word that Lorne Scharneberg has confirmed to an alumnus that he intends to return Cedarville to its fundamentalist roots. According to Scharneberg, Carl Ruby and others wanted Cedarville to “become like Wheaton (College)” and that he does not care if this return to fundamentalism results in a drop in enrolment. It is clear that the financial arguments employed by the university to defend its decision to eliminate the philosophy major are entirely facetious, that Carl Ruby’s resignation was forced, and that this fundamentalist faction remains bent on destroying any remaining semblance of academic freedom at the university.

Tomorrow, the board will meet to discuss the elimination of the philosophy major and Carl Ruby’s resignation for the final time. If Scharneberg and his allies succeed, Cedarville University will go the way of Bob Jones University and each of us can forget about our individual campaigns for justice. Please keep the entire Cedarville community in your thoughts and prayers this weekend. On Monday, I’ll report here on the board’s decisions.

Editor's Note: Increasingly, groups from the evangelical and fundamentalist communities are raising awareness about how fundamentalist culture protects abusers and mistreats victims.  I have elsewhere asked where the CCCU is on fundamentalist encroachment at member institutions.  Given the pervasive sexual scandals (and cover-ups), that question seems even more pertinent.  I also want to acknowledge the unkind anonymous comments on Sarah's previous posts.  For obvious reasons, I am disabling comments.

Cedarville University: A Very Brief Introduction

Cedarville University Series
Part 1 - Cedarville: A Very Brief Introduction
Part 2 - The Worst are Filled with Passionate Intensity
Part 3 - Things Fall Apart
Part 4 - The Center Cannot Hold

If you read the NewYork Times on Saturday, then you might be aware, superficially at least, that there is a Christian college called Cedarville University in the state of Ohio, and that there are suspicious goings on at this college, orchestrated by a faction of Christian fundamentalists.

Perhaps you ignored the story. Perhaps you skimmed it, and thought: this is to be expected, this is why Christian colleges shouldn’t exist.

Perhaps you paid it some attention, and decided to Google the situation. If you did, you’re probably confused. Is Cedarville becoming more conservative, or is it becoming liberal? Did its administrators really fire Carl Ruby, Michael Pahl, and eliminate the philosophy major out of ideological spite? Or is the backlash evidence of a liberal campaign to erode Cedarville’s conservative identity? And how do the firings of two fundamentalist professors in 2008 factor into all of this?

But these questions are the barest introduction to the chaos that threatens to topple the administration of one of the most prominent Christian universities in the US. Recent alumni revelations portray an institution so crippled and corrupted by its on-going identity crisis that it has knowingly sheltered, at last count, five members of faculty and staff guilty of either committing sexual abuse, or of covering it up. These cover ups span decades. The victims are male and female, gay and straight. They are missionary kids, schoolchildren, and Cedarville alumni. Some suffer in public, some in silence. And I am one of them.

In so many ways, Cedarville’s story is my story too. I entered Cedarville in 2006, a scholarship student from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Like most members of my freshman class, I came from an Evangelical family, and had spent my upbringing immersed in Evangelicalism’s infamously insular subculture. I dressed modestly, abstained from alcohol and from sex, and anticipated a university experience that would help me combine deep faith and intellectual enquiry. Unlike most of my classmates, I possessed a political perspective firmly located left of center, and I publicly identified as a feminist. If you are familiar with the political environment at America’s Christian colleges and universities, then you can likely imagine the student body’s reaction.

Even if I’d attended Cedarville during a season of calm, my ‘Cedarville experience’ (to borrow the Admissions teams’ language) would have been marked by ideologically motivated harassment from students, faculty and alumni. That’s not a particularly unusual story, by itself. The same story could be repeated by anyone who’s ever found themselves marginalized by a conservative religious community. Instead, my Cedarville experience is made truly unique by a series of controversies that began during my first semester on campus, and now threaten the integrity of the university’s national reputation.

In fall 2006, I had barely settled into my dorm room when the student body received word that Soulforce, a group of GLBT activists and their straight allies, would arrive in Cedarville to protest the university’s anti-gay admissions policies. Soulforce activists, called Equality Riders, made a national tour of the country’s Christian colleges and universities, and most denied riders access to their campuses. Cedarville, however, welcomed riders onto campus. Along with a group of other students, I acted as a campus guide for Equality riders. I also met a group of openly gay Cedarville alumni. The same alumni founded Cedarville Out, for GLBT and allied alumni, shortly after the Soulforce visit.

As an institution, Cedarville maintained its conservative identity throughout the Soulforce visit. The decision to welcome activists on campus lay primarily with Carl Ruby, the former Vice President for Student Life. If you did read that New York Times article, you’ll recognize that name. After 25 years of service to Cedarville University, Carl Ruby was forced to resign last month. Though Dr. Ruby has consistently adhered to a conservative position on sexual orientation and gay marriage, his compassion for gay students and alumni has been equally consistent. That compassion was first evident to me in his decision to permit Soulforce activists on campus. But it also invited accusations of liberalism. For many alumni, students, and parents, Ruby’s decision constituted capitulation to a radical leftist fringe, and threatened Cedarville’s historical identity as a Baptist institution.

The Soulforce visit marked the beginning of a troublesome season for Cedarville University. In my next posts, I’ll explain Cedarville’s decision to end its historic affiliation with the General Association of Baptists, the firing of two fundamentalist professors, its history of covering up sexual abuse, and the current controversy. 

J. Edgar Hoover, 1938 OBU Commencement Speaker

In yesterday's post on Tom Terry's recent chapel address, I mentioned that Terry once provided me with archival information on J. Edgar Hoover's visit to OBU in 1938.  I moved recently, and can't find the documents at this moment.  But a number of people have contacted me, curious about OBU's J. Edgar Hoover connection.  So I'll do my best to tell the story.

Unbeknownst to many, the list of OBU's honorary doctorate recipients includes a very famous (or infamous) name: J. Edgar Hoover.  By the time young John Wesley Raley became OBU's president in 1934, young John Edgar Hoover had made a name for himself as the FBI aggressively investigated dissidents and fought gangsters.  Raley had already twice invited Hoover to come to OBU by the time Hoover sent word in the fall of 1937 that he would be able to speak at the 1938 graduation.

With the expected crowds, no venue on OBU's campus would be suitable.  It was decided that the graduation would take place at the newly-completed Shawnee Municipal Auditorium on Bell Street downtown.  In the meantime, 1938 turned out to be a momentous year for OBU.  A new men's choir, called Sangerbund, was formed under the direction of a promising young music professor named Warren M. Angell.  It later became the Bison Glee Club.  The iconic Oval Fountain was a gift to OBU from the Class of 1938.

A native Washingtonian, J. Edgar Hoover took a position with the Justice Department's Alien Enemy Bureau immediately after completing his education.  Later, he worked in intelligence, monitoring suspected radicals (including future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter).  In the early 1920s Hoover moved to the Bureau of Investigation.  In 1924, the Attorney General of the United States made Hoover acting director.  After President Warren Harding's death that year and amid charges that the prior director was involved in a political scandal, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Hoover Director.  The bureau suffered a few embarrassments as high-profile criminals evaded capture or escaped, but in general, the FBI prospered under Hoover.  It brought notorious gangsters to justice and Hoover was widely credited with making federal law enforcement more scientific and professionalized.

A May 12, 1938 Baptist Messenger made little mention of Hoover's planned visit, but several of the news clippings Tom Terry sent me indicated that this was a huge event for OBU -- and for the entire state.  (Though note several items of interest on the OBU page of this newspaper.  First, in an article about the OBU debate team, a student named James Ralph Scales is listed having won several debates. Scales followed John Wesley Raley as president of his alma mater and went on to become president of Wake Forest University.  A statue of Scales was unveiled between Shawnee Hall and the library 18 months ago.  Also, note the mention of Porter Routh returning from seminary in Louisville.  Routh was OBU's P.R. director, journalism instructor, faculty advisor for the Bison newspaper, and superintendent of the Bison Press.  This was, of course, long before Baptists stopped believing in objective journalism and Baptist college administrators intimidated and/or ran off talented journalism professors.)

Anyway, Hoover's trip to Oklahoma also included a visit to the FBI's Oklahoma City field office.  On the morning of May 23, 1938, he arrived at OBU to be greeted by President Raley.  To accommodate the crowd, the graduation was held off campus.  Hoover received an honorary LL.D. and gave what amounted to a typical God-and-country commencement address.  The May 26 Baptist Messenger mentioned that Hoover condemned the role of politics in law enforcement.  He also implored the graduates to "show the same pioneering spirit in their fight against crime that the early Oklahomans showed in the building of a great state."  Hoover admonished graduates to follow the Golden Rule and to remember that honesty was needed above all things in a world of doubt and suspicion.

Baptist Messenger (May 26, 1938)

Many newspapers published reports on Hoover's appearance, and the event was broadcast via radio all over Oklahoma.  One account described Hoover as "one of Washington's most eligible bachelors."  Separately, the press noted that Hoover's entourage included Deputy Director Clyde Tolson.  Of course, most people now believe that Hoover was gay and that Tolson (who received the flag draped over Hoover's coffin after it laid in state in the U.S. Capitol, inherited his estate, moved into his house, and was buried a few feet away in the Congressional Cemetery) was his partner.  Thus it may be the case that Hoover and Tolson were among the first gay people at OBU.  But they were certainly not the last, as everyone knows.  At least they were closeted, which is how, then as now, OBU and the BGCO prefer gay people to be.

This would not the the last OBU/Raley family/Justice Department connection.  John Wesley Raley, Jr., who graduated from OBU in the mid-1950s, was appointed by President George H. W. Bush to be United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Oklahoma.

Hoover went on to have a colorful, controversial, and incredibly long tenure as FBI director.  He served under Presidents Coolidge, (Herbert) Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.