Earlier this semester, at one of the first Student Senate meetings of the year, Ashland’s new president Carlos Campo joined us. The meeting began the same way every Student Senate meeting begins: with the Pledge of Allegiance and a brief prayer. This – being the way we begin all meetings – had long ago become routine for me; I never gave it much thought.  Dr. Campo, however, immediately noticed it and observed that this was one of the things that made Ashland truly unique.  I had never thought of just how unique it was, but upon hearing him say it, I knew that it was self-evidently true, that Ashland is not a typical modern university, but a traditional one where free inquiry and fair debate rule. 

Last April, a student group at Oberlin invited a speaker to campus. This speaker, Christina Hoff Sommers, was an outspoken opponent of modern feminism and many Oberlin students disagreed with some of her public statements. Instead of attending the event and participating in a serious discussion of the issues, as Ashland students would have done, these students chose to behave in a much more asinine manner. They refused to attend the event and put up signs on campus saying that certain members for the hosting club were “perpetuating rape culture” and organized a “safe space” for students traumatized by the speaker.

Of course, we, at Ashland, recognize the absurdity of this crass behavior. At universities all over the country, however, this type of behavior, subversive to the education of students, is becoming commonplace.  This is because students and faculty at many schools are becoming less interested in participating in free inquiry and more interested in ridiculing it. This creates a campus culture incompatible with free speech and scholarship and the university produces thousands of “graduates” incapable of serious thought and participation in civil society.

Meanwhile, at Ashland we have a much different character in our student body. While our students may disagree with each other, I have never seen or heard of students being vilified for their beliefs in the same way the Oberlin students who hosted Christina Hoff Sommers were. Earlier this month, I attended a watch party for the presidential debate hosted by the College Republicans. The students at the event came from a myriad of different political backgrounds yet I never sensed a trace of the hostility that is so pervasive on other campuses.

The reason for the vast difference is that Ashland University attracts a different kind of student. AU students are ready and willing to encounter tough ideas without retreating to a “safe space” as students at other institutions are prone to do. Ashland has long dedicated itself to the belief that “all truth is God’s truth” and through free inquiry His truth can be known. This dedication can be seen in the way AU students approach disagreements about controversial topics; not as Oberlin students running from free inquiry, but as adults pursuing the truth in a serious manner.

This unique campus atmosphere is one of Ashland’s greatest strengths. If we wish to succeed in becoming a leading institution of education in the region, we must wed ourselves to our foundational principles that free inquiry will lead us to Truth. We must ensure that we educate students, freeing their minds from narrow prejudice and unreflective opinion so that we can create citizens who think freely and critically about the important questions of life. As more and more institutions like Oberlin retreat from the light of free inquiry into the shadows of safe rooms and microaggressions, Ashland University will stand as a beacon of knowledge in the darkness of self-imposed ignorance.