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Bob Jones Univ. Drops Race Date Ban

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  Bob Jones University dropped its ban on interracial dating Friday, a month after Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush's visit to the school drew widespread criticism.

``As of today, we've dropped the rule,'' Bob Jones III said on CNN's ``Larry King Live'' Friday night.

During Bush's appearance at the fundamentalist Christian school last month, the Texas governor told his audience that he shared their conservative views. Bush later apologized for failing to criticize the school's anti-Catholic views and racial policies.

``I'm pleased that they've changed the policy,'' Bush said Friday while campaigning in New York. ``Right after my speech, I spoke out against the policy. The university has made the right decision.''

The Greenville school banned interracial dating, although it started admitting black students after it lost its tax exemption in 1983 after a 13-year battle with the Internal Revenue Service that cited the school's discrimination.

The school had defended the policy based on a biblical interpretation that God created people differently for a reason. The policy arose in the 1950s when an Asian family threatened to sue after their son, a student, almost married a white girl, a school spokesman has said.

``We don't have to have that rule,'' Jones said. ``This thing is of such insignificance to us. It's so significant to the world at large, the media in particular, why should we have this thing here as an obstacle?''

Jones said the school had a greater concern for its graduates than for keeping the rule. While extolling the virtues of the school's graduates he said, ``But now we're being defined as a racist school, that's all the media talk about.''

Jones said he met with the school's administrators Friday afternoon to discuss the rule change before flying to Washington for the TV interview.

Earlier Friday, the university used full-page newspaper advertisements in USA Today and South Carolina's largest newspapers to answer some of the national criticism directed at it. Democrats in Congress this week introduced a resolution seeking to condemn the university.

Bob Jones University is a popular stop for many Republican candidates seeking conservative support.

Bush appeared at the school shortly after he lost to Sen. John McCain in the New Hampshire primary. The South Carolina primary was looming at the time, and he went on to win in the conservative state.

After losing South Carolina, McCain's campaign made ``Catholic Voter Alert'' calls in the next states, Michigan and Washington, to tell them of Bush's visit to Bob Jones.

Of the school's rule change Friday, John McCain said: ``It's the right thing to do.''

GOP candidate Alan Keyes, who recently spoke at Bob Jones University, said he thought lifting the ban was ``a good step forward.''

``As you know I'm married to an Indian American, so our marriage would have violated their own guidelines,'' he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

``I think this will help, so that the world will understand the real heart of Bob Jones University, and the people I met there and the people I know there. I think that's the shining truth that will come through.''

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley said through a spokesman: ``It's about time.''

The university, in the Appalachian foothills city of Greenville, has 3,500 students. It has long established itself as a bastion of fundamentalism.

Jones III, president since 1971, and his father, Bob Jones Jr., who died in 1997, have been sharp-tongued about those they believe have abandoned the strict teachings of the Bible, including Billy Graham and the pope. Graham should not have reached out across denominations for his crusades, Jones III says. And rather than meet Pope John Paul II when he visited Columbia in 1987, Bob Jones Jr. said he would rather ``speak to the devil himself.''

His grandfather, an evangelist and son of an Alabama sharecropper, was a product of the Bible-thumping, Jim Crow-era South. Bob Jones founded the school in 1927 in College Point, Fla. He later moved it to Cleveland, Tenn., then brought it to Greenville when the Chamber of Commerce offered to buy 170 acres of land for the school.

Today, Bob Jones University offers more than 100 undergraduate majors, from electrical engineering and aviation management to Bible teaching, and 55 graduate degrees, most of those religious or musically oriented.

-- nuthin wrong with zebras (just@not.my.daughter), March 04, 2000

Answers

You know, "PC" is an "infection" that's screwing up the whole world. I am the end result of some inter-racial loving, (dates suck cause they're just interviews to see if any "love" is gonna happen) & my kid is the result of some inter-racial love. Shoot, inter-racial love is FUN!

BUT!!!! If a group of people want to forbid it within their own organization that should be their own business, they have a right to do that. I guess they got taken in by taking "federal dollars". Those "federal dollars" sure have some strong mojo.

-- Me (Me@Me.com), March 04, 2000.

Interesting, isn't it? Publicity sure does more than reasoned arguments, every time. Also interesting, is the media commotion about Bush speaking at Bob Jones U. Much more fuss than about Keye's speaking there. Personally, I'd be interested in reading the texts of both speeches -- just curiousity, ya know.

Why is it automatically bad for a candidate to speak to a group that is not PC? Hell, I'd think it cool if Keyes addressed the Klan (and I think that guy has the cojones to do it). Sure wouldn't mean he endorsed them.

Looks like a good forum; hope I can find time to enjoy it here.

"An armed society is a polite society."

-- Hamilton Felix (skagity2k@hotmail.com), March 04, 2000.

Hamilton, you said,

"Hell, I'd think it cool if Keyes addressed the Klan (and I think that guy has the cojones to do it)"

I'd like to see that too. Of course, I'd much rather have Bob Dole in office shaking his pen and yelling at the Chinese than Klinton selling missle technology to them, but that's another story.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), March 04, 2000.

"An armed society is a polite society."

As in "Could I please have all the cash in your register?"

Cheers,

-- Phil (pprefont18@hotmail.com), March 04, 2000.

Zebra?

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), March 04, 2000.

Pretty good, Phil. But I think it's more as in, "Please to not assault or rob me, lest I be forced to most regrettably blow your innards all over the sidewalk."

Actually, it's:

Well, in the first place an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization. --Robert A. Heinlein, Claude Mordan to Hamilton Felix, in Beyond This Horizon, copyright 1942, Street Publications

I'm sure the members of THIS forum are all well informed, and know that the best armed segments of our society suffer the least violent crime.

Keep you Powder Dry, friends.

-- Hamilton Felix (skagity2k@hotmail.com), March 05, 2000.