The current president of the university is Bob Jones III, grandson of the founder. It sits on a 225-acre campus, has a staff of 1,800 and a student body of 5,000, and offers degrees in 150 majors, plus additional schools from kindergarten through 12th grade. The college, like many other Fundamentalist Christianity Christian schools, has not sought accreditation due to concerns about governmental control over policy or curriculum.
Its mission statement is "Within the cultural and academic soil of liberal arts education, Bob Jones University exists to grow Christlike character that is Scripturally disciplined; others-serving; God-loving; Christ-proclaiming; and focused above."
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2 Art Collection 3 Creed 4 Controversy 5 Presidential Campaigns 6 External link |
History
BJU was founded in 1927 by evangelist Bob Jones, Sr., in College Point, Florida. Jones was the son of an Alabama sharecropper. His stated purpose was to create a school where Christian students could receive a high-quality education in a strongly traditional Christian environment.
The school moved to Cleveland, Tennessee in 1933, and to its present campus in Greenville, South Carolina in 1947.
Art Collection
Bob Jones, Jr., son of the founder, had an interest in art depicting scenes from the Bible, especially those which had a highly illustrative nature rather than those relying on symbols. He began collecting after World War II, and concentrated on Italian Baroque painters. This style was much out of favor in the mid-20th century and the works were relatively inexpensive, and Jones built up an important collection. He donated his paintings to a museum at the University.
Creed
Students at BJU recite the University Creed at chapel services each day. They are also required to sign it annually as a statement of faith, as a condition of enrollment.Controversy
Bob Jones University claims it adopted a policy against interracial dating in the 1950s after the parents of an female Asian student threatened legal action after learning that their daughter was dating a white student. Bob Jones University lost its Internal Revenue Service tax exemption in 1980 because of this policy. The school appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the school met the criteria for tax-exempt status on several counts. U.S. President Ronald Reagan supported the school's tax exempt status, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1983 in favour of the IRS (see Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574). In 2000, the policy was dropped in its entirety (after some experimentation with a policy of parental consent for interracial dating) shortly after the State of South Carolina legalized interracial marriage,
Presidential Campaigns
In 2000, George W. Bush, while campaigning to become U.S. President, addressed a function at the school. Many people disagreed with Bush's decision to address a function at the controversial institution, including many American Conservatives. On the day of Bush's visit, he denounced the school's policy of banning interracial dating, noting that his brother Jeb Bush could not have dated his wife (who is Latina) if he had attended the school. Bush also later wrote a formal letter of apology for the visit to Cardinal John O'Connor of New York given what is seen as the Bob Jones University's strongly anti-Catholic prejudice.
Bush's visit to the school follows a long line of visits from prominent politicians, including Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, John Ashcroft, and the Democratic Governor of South Carolina, Jim Hodges.