<p>Ordinarily I'm one of those people who keep their religious preferences and opinions out of public discourse. However, the Smith College Budget proposal to eliminate the college's chaplains makes this an issue where I feel the need to speak up. (hey, it's a Smith tradition.)</p>
<p>Following is a re-post of my first note to President Christ.</p>
<p>I'll follow in separate posts with the delegated response from Dean Mahoney and my answer to her. Comments...hey, it's a discussion board. And if you want to become part of a movement to get the decision reversed, please PM me or, better yet, e-mail me.</p>
<p>====</p>
<p>Dear Dr. Christ:</p>
<p>I am appalled at the story in the Sophian that Smith College is contemplating eliminating the chaplains as a budgetary measure.</p>
<p>The notion that eliminating chaplains can be spun as promoting diversity is ludicrous. The dominant beliefs at Smith are secular; it's the practicing religious students who contribute to diversity and who should be receiving support.</p>
<p>Indeed, when one Smithie heard that my daughter was a practicing Catholic, she gasped and said, "You can't be Catholic...you're <em>smart</em>!" Substitute terms pertaining to race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation for "practicing Catholic." I would say that religiously inclined students deserve all the support the chaplains can provide.</p>
<p>Moreover, the Smith chaplains serve a broad spectrum of religious belief and are extremely ecumenical in their practice. I was very pleased when on a trip to the Maryknoll retreat house in New York, a trip arranged and coordinated by chaplain Liz Carr, my daughter was accompanied by a Jewish student and an atheist...seems to be the kind of diversity and tolerance-building activity that should be encouraged.</p>
<p>This proposal should be shelved indefinitely for "further study." </p>
<p>President Christ forwarded your email to me for a response. As Dean of the College, I oversee the chapel.</p>
<p>The proposal to eliminate three college chaplains was not made easily or lightly. I am acutely aware that our chaplains have provided support for and touched the lives of many students. I want to assure you that we will continue to support students’ religious and spiritual needs. Remaining on staff will be our Dean of Religious Life, whose job is to attend to the full range of faiths at Smith. Dear Walters has been at Smith for eight years and has established a strong presence as a spiritual and ethical leader on campus. Student of all faiths, as well as students of no faith, seek her out. She will be assisted by an Associate who will also support student programming, visits by religious leaders, occasional religious services, and other events. </p>
<p>The chapel proposal supports diversity in the following sense: our student body comprises many faiths beyond Jewish, Catholic and Protestant. It is difficult to justify the presence of chaplains who serve three particular faith communities when we do not have the resources to hire chaplains for all the other faith communities on campus. For example, we currently have a large and active Muslim population. They cannot understand why they don’t merit a chaplain as well. I know that our chaplains have done excellent interfaith work; we will not lose our emphasis on that aspect of students’ education. Our Dean Walters has long been committed to such work.</p>
<p>In times of great budget constraint, we have had to look at staffing levels across the college. The level of staffing in our chapel is far greater than that in our peer liberal arts colleges and rivals that of major research universities. Fortunately, we have the 5-College consortium which we will depend upon to help provide religious counsel for our students.</p>
<p>I am sorry to hear that your daughter had a bad experience at Smith when she spoke about her Catholic faith. I assure you that we will continue to work to include religious diversity as one of the important aspects of diversity at Smith.</p>
<p>My response of 5/19/09 to Dean Mahoney, copied to Dean for Religious Life Jennifer Walters.</p>
<p>===</p>
<p>Dear Dean Mahoney:</p>
<p>I found your response—and related communications from the office of Dr. Christ which I’ve read in the interim—pertaining to the budget and the elimination of the Smith College chaplains disappointing, dismaying, and ultimately disingenuous to the point of intellectual dishonesty. Below I’ve responded to a number of items and I conclude with a request.</p>
<p>Let’s start with the line from the letter from Dr. Christ’s office regarding Proposed Budget Reduction Plan:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>A single innocuous line, which would lead the reader to believe that there was a new emphasis on programming at lower cost…no hint of “reduction in staff,” as is made clear in other sections of the document regarding other proposed cuts. The lack of candor here, compared to other sections of the budget document, is significant and curiously lacking in…ethics.</p>
<p>If this summary is what the Board of Trustees based their vote upon, I doubt they had an inkling that eliminating the chaplaincies was an explicit line-item in the budget. Nor do I think they understood the impact on Smith communities. </p>
<p>from your e-mail of 5/13 in response to my initial complaint:
</p>
<p>First, my understanding is that the chaplains are chaplains to the College first, chaplains of their individual faith traditions second. As such, each responds to the needs of students of all faiths, or questionable faith, or no faith at all.</p>
<p>Second, I believe—and please correct me if I am wrong—that there was Muslim chaplain for several years, shared with the Counseling Center through last year. Certainly, Smith’s population warrants a Muslim chaplain as well as the current three for the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish faith traditions, and funding for such a position I would imagine be shared among others of the Five Colleges…as has funding for the current chaplains, I believe. The issue of a Muslim chaplain is thus a red herring, obfuscating the broader issues of faith and spiritual diversity at Smith.</p>
<p>Your response about the [valid] needs of Muslim students versus the needs of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish students carries an unfortunate aura of attempting to play one religion off against the others. Setting aside, for the moment, the need for obtaining a new Muslim chaplain, you present a curious argument: the notion that if there isn’t a chaplain for every stripe of belief (or lack thereof) then there should be no chaplains at all. This is akin to abolishing the History department if it lacked sufficient depth in East Asian history. The dubious “rigor” behind such thinking is unworthy of Smith College and—there’s no other word for it—dishonest. To the point where I think many Smith students and alumnae would be embarrassed for their alma mater, regardless of fiscal stance, regardless of their stance on faith.</p>
<p>continued from your e-mail of 5/13:
</p>
<p>It’s difficult to fathom how anyone can seriously envision promoting “interfaith” work by eviscerating the support structure for three existing faith communities and letting a fourth remain vacant. True “interfaith” activity does not represent some bland and presumably offensive-to-no-one pastiche of arms-length activity involving guest speakers and an occasional service but a vibrant on-going resonance and interaction between different faith communities, communities which will be irrevocably damaged by the withdrawal of the chaplaincies.</p>
<p>you continue:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>“Diversity” is not achieved by the leveling of all interests to a least common denominator. One gets the sense, from reading various communications, that the young women of faith at Smith are an unfashionable minority, a constituency deemed not as worthy as some others. One is compelled to wonder what the proposed difference in funding would be if the chaplaincies were in support of communities based on ethnicity or orientation rather than faith.</p>
<p>As your observation about the lack of a Muslim chaplain carried an implicit tension between one faith and others, so this notion of counterfeit “diversity” also plays off secular women against women of faith, as false a dichotomy as there ever was.</p>
<p>Eliminating the chaplain positions does not foster diversity; in fact quite the contrary, it eliminates distinct voices and visions. To assert that eliminating the chaplains fosters diversity is by turns reprehensible, cynical, and the most fundamentally dishonest components of Smith College’s statements on this matter.</p>
<p>Next, the effect of this proposed policy on the young women of faith is either ignored or woefully underestimated.</p>
<p>From your e-mail of 4/17 to the Smith community:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The Smith religious communities, with their professional adult leadership embodied in the chaplains, is sensitive to, caters to, and provides channels of activity calibrated to the needs and temperament of Smith students. There are distinctions of demographic-based interests consider congregations of graying heads or young parents concerned with their toddler’s pre-school. There is the matter of timing…the Smith Catholic services were wisely held at Sunday 5pm as opposed to early Sunday morning. Sunday morning…for college students!!? I doubt that the local houses of worship would be particularly responsive to some of the needs and desires of many Smith women of faith. </p>
<p>More tellingly, the failure of the administration to make distinctions between a house of worship (a place) and a faith community (a group of people) bespeaks an ignorance of, and an insensitivity to, religious practice. It suggests a hazy theology predicated on a attend-services-and-get-your-ticket-punched school of religious observance.</p>
<p>I can speak first-hand only of Smith’s Catholic community but I presume that the others also offer support for who they are in a way that they would not find at the local houses of worship. The Smith Catholic community contains some women who are pro-choice, some who favor women priests, and some who are lesbian or bi-sexual. These are not comfortable positions to hold in our church and the young women who have had the support of their faith communities have been grateful for it. </p>
<p>Without the chaplains attuned to these young people, with the professional adult leadership of the chaplains, that support will be lost to these young women and no amount of “interfaith” or “diversity”-driven programs on ethics or social responsibility can replace it. And no one who understands what it is to be part of a faith community could think otherwise. </p>
<p>One knowledgeable of Smith, aware of its history and its soul, would think that protecting and supporting these women and their values against institutional opposition, giving them the strength and courage to stand for justice, would find resonance within the greater Smith community and the administration, regardless of individual belief. One of the pieces of Smith propaganda has a line that I’ve often quoted: “Four years where it’s all about you.” For some of these young women, their faith communities, with the support and leadership of their chaplains, are a significant part of that “all about you.” These young women, struggling with issues of belief and identity and their faith, are as deserving of social support as, say, newborn mothers suffering from depression. </p>
<p>I know these people, both those who have been at Smith as a part of these communities, those who are there now, and those who will come in the future. I will not break faith with them, I will stand with them and for them, and to those who would dismiss their concerns and do away with their support I will answer without ceasing.</p>
<p>And while both ethics and social responsibility are necessary aspects of religious practice, neither are they sufficient to encompass the whole and the implicit suggestion that programs centered on ethics and social responsibility fulfill that role speaks to a poor understanding.</p>
<p>You continue:
</p>
<p>Consider the difference between “talking about” and “participating in.” Faith is nurtured in community, not the intellectual product of a lecture series. No series of guests can substitute for an on-going, adult, professional (trained) spiritual leadership. It’s as if Studio Art could be replaced by a series of lecturers talking about how to paint or sculpt.</p>
<p>Cost savings:
It has come to my attention that the position of the Catholic chaplain, at least, is funded through an endowment. I suppose that with the position vacated, the interest from the endowment would be used to fund some of the “diversity” “interfaith” activities. Or in plainer English, could liberate the proceeds of an endowment to fund other activities that the College would not then have to otherwise fund. In other words, as far as the <em>Catholic</em> chaplain position goes, the cuts save nothing if my understanding is correct. So what’s being saved, if there are no other endowments in play, are the costs of the Protestant and Jewish chaplains as well as the savings realized by not securing a new Muslim chaplain. Furthermore, the savings is only a portion of the cost of the chaplaincies as the total cost is shared with Amherst College. </p>
<p>Integrity, applications, and admissions yield:
I can not ignore the fact that I feel personally betrayed by Smith’s decision. I have been an active participant at parties for prospective students and their families as organized by the local Smith College Club, speaking parent to parent about Smith, answering their questions and addressing concerns. (And not coincidentally leaving their daughters the space to scoot off to talk to current students about <em>their</em> questions and concerns outside of parental earshot.) </p>
<p>I have upon many occasions answered questions about religious life at Smith, most recently at a gathering for admitted students and their parents just last month. I earnestly assured two mothers, of two different faith traditions, neither of them my own, that the Smith religious communities, while small, were active and vibrant and gave support to Smith women of faith. The decision to cut the chaplains gives lie to my assurances and is embarrassing, all the more so because I never dreamed that Smith would ever indulge in any anti-religious action.</p>
<p>On a more pragmatic, less personal note, the attitude of Smith College towards faith communities, as embodied by the proposed elimination of the chaplains, may well have a detrimental effect an applications and yield. If this action becomes known, it will send a message to young women of faith, “You are not wanted here” at a time when, as ever, Smith College should desire to be the home of the most talented and engaged women that they can attract. Smith College has an admirable stance in providing support for students of many racial and ethnic backgrounds, students from many international locations, and students possessing a wide range of sexual orientation; in what manner can it be justified that the same support not extend to women of different spiritual traditions?</p>
<p>As regards the process,
from the e-mail from Carol Christ to Smith College</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The Queen of Hearts cried out, “Sentence first, verdict afterwards.” Consultation and examination of a model <em>after</em> the existing chaplains have been dismissed, as has been proposed, is as much a travesty. Yet again, this is intellectually dishonest and is unworthy of Smith College. If there is to be an examination of models and consultation with stakeholders from many perspectives, it should be done while the existing structure is in place, a place from which, if new directions are decided upon, a thoughtful programmatic transition can be planned and implemented without damaging the existing communities.</p>
<p>I can not stress enough just how damaging the elimination of the chaplains will be to the current communities. Communities are delicate organisms, even more delicate than institutions due the lack of an exoskeletal structure, and damage casually inflicted in a moment can take a long time to repair. At the minimum, the chaplains should be retained while input about models of Chapel is sought from a broad range of sources. Change, if it is concluded that such is warranted, should come as a result of deep and considered study by a broad range of stakeholders while the communities are still active.</p>
<p>In conclusion, I ask that the decision to cut the chaplaincies be held in abeyance for one year while a broader, considered study that includes a wide range of stakeholders, including students, religious leaders, administrators, faculty, parents, and alumnae. I hope that I might have news of such a response after a brief interval of reflection and discussion. </p>
<p>TD, did you send this to Pres. Christ directly, or through the comment box on the website about budget changes? Because I sent mine through the comment box and never heard back (and I had close contact with both Pres. Christ and Dean Mahoney while in college…the latter was my pre-major adviser, and the former one of my grad school recommenders).</p>
<p>In case anyone’s interested, here were my comments:</p>
<p>Having served on the Dining Implementation Committee that suggested closing dining rooms in 2003-5, I definitely respect that the committee making this latest plan had some very difficult and heart-wrenching decisions to make.</p>
<p>I agree with capping tuition benefits at the Campus School. Northampton and many surrounding areas have great public schools and it’s not a hardship for staff to have to choose them. I really don’t think we should even HAVE a campus school anymore. Though I know the families who send kids there, and the education department, would make closure a public relations nightmare, I think the money would be better spent on transporting student teachers to public schools for their practica and expanding afterschool/early childhood day care for the children of students and staff.</p>
<p>As for the rest of the plan, while I’m sad about Jterm I understand that just keeping the heat in the buildings at 55 degrees for three extra weeks in the winter is probably a huge savings. Perhaps a good substitute would be keeping the houses open during spring break and a student-run program of mini-courses (the teachers might not be paid for running classes; students would just have to pay the fee for materials)?</p>
<p>I also think President Christ should take a voluntary pay cut of the same percentage by which the college is reducing its annual operating expenses.</p>
<p>Reducing health benefits for professors emeriti could impose a serious financial hardship on people living on fixed incomes and potentially unable to find other employment due to age or illness; I disagree with an across-the-board elimination of this program.</p>
<p>If Jahnige and CFLAC are closed, I think
a) locating 24-hour computer labs in more houses and campus buildings would be a good substitute
b) an office currently located in one of the small buildings on the campus periphery (Dining Services on 30 Belmont?) should be moved to the basement of Wright Hall and the vacated building should be rented, sold, or mothballed.</p>
<p>Most importantly, I agree with prioritizing energy efficiency/resource conservation and the preservation of need-based financial aid, and I would urge a scaling back of merit aid. The STRIDE program has skyrocketed in the size of its award over the past few years (it’s now a $15k grant/year, quite similar to the Zollman). Making it $10,000 starting with the class of 2014 would save $125,000 a year, assuming that half the savings would vanish because students would just qualify for increased need-based aid (obviously this is just a guess)</p>
<p>Stacy, my original was sent directly to President Christ, who delegated the reply to Dean Mahoney. I am being very formal in my responses as I expect it to be but the beginning of a paper trail in a lonnnng process that will culminate in an appeal to the Board of Trustees if necessary.</p>
<p>I know the Smithies hate it when we wander over here, but…I just wanted to say thank you to TheDad. As a sister to our Smithies, I am concerned about this and am glad that constituents are speaking up. :)</p>
<p>Speaking truthfully, faced with a deficit and instructed by the Trustees to come up with cuts worth $30 million without endangering academic quality and without cutting financial aid, I probably would have cut the chaplains, too. But then, what do I know? I’m a Quaker, and we don’t do ‘hireling clergy’. I went to bat for Josten Library (successfully) just as you are for the chaplains, and I am sure the squeaky wheels will be heard loud and clear! That’s the way it should work, and I am glad Smith is being so open about the process.</p>
<p>P.S. I received a VERY nice letter back from Christ.</p>
<p>Mini, I’m taking a break from crafting the beginning of what I hope will be a very squeaky wheel. The administration’s arguments are just so dishonest, budget crisis or no. It feels a bit as if they’re using the budget crisis to do something that they wanted to do anyway. At least one of the positions is endowed and if the position is eliminated, the money will be used to fund other activities. And they’re not being very transparent, either. The amount of money to be saved is a moving target that they haven’t shared publicly. A proposal to save some funds was made and the response was, “Well, now that’s not enough, it’s more.” </p>
<p>MHC, you’re welcome over here. On this issue, I would call truce and sit down and break bread with a Bush-loving Republican if they wanted to collaborate in the campaign to save the chaplains. For those of you who know me, this is a marker for just how upset and determined I am, not an invitation to verboten political discussion. (Actually, I feel a bit like Peter O’Toole in “Lawrence of Arabia” as he looks upon the train transporting Turkish troops.)</p>
<p>Update 6/5/09: Have contacted more than three dozen people and have formed a group to oppose these changes. Still have a few more specific people to track down and then we’ll start hammering out the text for what we object to both in process and in substance. We have some <em>terrific</em> people on board so far.</p>
<p>If there is no positive response before then, I’m looking at a presentation to the Board of Trustees in October. Lots of groundwork to be done on that score, obviously.</p>
<p>Wow, I can’t believe this made it to the New York Times. I applaud TD’s grassroots efforts, but I have to admit that I am one of those students (or former students, to be exact) who look on the end of the chaplaincy with some ambivalence. It seems that there ought to be chaplains not just to use the chapel for services but mostly to be available for students in need, educating and guiding. But at the same time, if there isn’t student demand to justify the presence and expense of chaplains, then there isn’t much to be done about it, particularly in times of economic crisis. I feel that it’s sad but I can’t muster much indignation.</p>
<p>I just clicked on this thread because religion is important to me. I am not a Smith student, but I am a student at a college blessed with a wonderful religious life on campus, including chaplains of all faiths. </p>
<p>One thing, as a Catholic, struck me:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It is wonderful to find a such diversity within the Catholic community on campus, but in the first two cases, I would hope that the chaplaincy would work to bring students into communion with the Church, and therefore fully with Christ.</p>
<p>I’d missed that in the NYT, will go back and look for it.</p>
<p>Baelor, and why do you presume that any of the students mentioned weren’t in communion with the church? Being at odds with the hierarchy over choice or women priests does not put individuals out of communion with the church. I can cite catechists and teachers of theology, thank you very much. Fwiw, if it were put to a vote, both propositions would probably pass in our parish.</p>
<p>S&P, the economic issues are small and a smoke screen put out by the administration to do something they were inclined to do…the economic crisis gave them the excuse to do it. There was endowed money explicitly for the purpose of funding the chaplains; the administration has proposed diverting it to some weak-tea lectures on ethics.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, my grassroots efforts came to naught though I’m happy that at least some attention was gained in the NYT. Today’s students have a whole bunch of wonderful networking tools but are very squeamish about challenging authority. I was told by several that they or their parents were worried about retribution in the form of financial aid cuts or even being expelled from school(!!!) for opposing policy. </p>
<p>Had there been students willing to lead, this would have been before the Board of Trustees on one hand, on Fox News on the other. One student told me, “But the administration won’t like it if we go around them to the Trustees.” <glyph of=“” disgust=“”></glyph></p>
<p>The administration did a beautiful job of divide and conquer among the Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and the unchurched. (Most people don’t know that there was an Islamic chaplain. When she left a few years ago, they simply left the position unfilled. This has been a long time coming.)</p>
<p>I feel bad for the on-campus faith communities that have been irreparably damaged by this. And I have nothing but contempt for the combination of ignorance and cynicism that Carol Christ (what an ironic name) and Jennifer Walters displayed through this whole process. (Further irony: Jennifer Walters is an ordained Episcopal priest but I think the idea of having to perform pastoral work with students terrifies her.)</p>
<p>The anti-religious threads running through Smith are an example of my least favorite part of Smith: the sometimes overwhelming political correctness.</p>
<p>In communion ideologically. And we both know that the Church is not a democracy.</p>
<p>I was just saying that a rejection, of say, male-only ordination even on a psychological is more than just disagreement with the Church on that issue, as Pope John Paul II explicitly stated that the reservation of ordination to males is an infallible teaching under the ordinary Magisterium. So to disagree with the reservation of the priesthood to males is to assert that the Church does not teach infallibly, which would certainly be problematic in terms of ideological communion with the Church.</p>
<p>I don’t want to sidetrack the thread, so if this is of any interest to you, I would be more than happy to continue via PM. </p>
<p>The larger point was that I appreciate the work that you are doing, and it sounds like the Catholic chaplaincy on Smith should stay, despite the concerns of this paranoid poster.</p>
<p>J2P2 could blow it out his pontifical posterior. I have no desire to continue this discussion via PM. I am perfectly clear on the distinctions between church-as-faith-community, church-as-institution, and church-as-hierarchy. </p>
<p>My road of conversion to Catholicism took 25 years and was neither hasty nor superficial and my catechetical formation was long, deep, and nuanced. As the priest who oversaw my reception into the Church said, “I can find a priest who would tell you ‘No,’ but I have no problem with you.”</p>
<p>Postscript: I’ve been following Pope Benedict since he was Cardinal Ratzinger in the early 1970’s and I know what he about too. This, too, shall pass.</p>
<p>The very last issue we explored was the notion of becoming an insurgent in the moment of conversion. There is a reason my Facebook page lists my religion as “subversive Catholic.”</p>
<p>It is clearly very appropriate. I only hope that you accord those in your parish more politeness than you have given to the two most recent Holy Fathers, who are also very aptly titled.</p>
<p>Somehow, over time, infallible teachings have a sneaky way of finding themselves not so infallible after all. (My bad: I’m a Quaker - we were considered closet Papists by the Protestants 'cause inerrant Scripture didn’t hold up to much scrutiny when different folks said it meant different things; and heretics 'cause we didn’t believe the Pope had any better hold on truth than we did.)</p>
I went to bat for Josten Library (successfully) just as you are for the chaplains, and I am sure the squeaky wheels will be heard loud and clear! That’s the way it should work, and I am glad Smith is being so open about the process.</p>
On this issue, I would call truce and sit down and break bread with a Bush-loving Republican if they wanted to collaborate in the campaign to save the chaplains. For those of you who know me, this is a marker for just how upset and determined I am, not an invitation to verboten political discussion. (Actually, I feel a bit like Peter O’Toole in “Lawrence of Arabia” as he looks upon the train transporting Turkish troops.)</p>