Or, why would anyone suffer through all those rules? I received an email today that detailed the some of the requirements for getting music approved for outreach ministries. Did you know that every vocal performance by an officially sanctioned BJU group is supposed to be memorized?
Why? I think to make sure that performances are well practiced for, but the e-mail doesn't say. It's a PR thing for BJU, I'll bet, to make sure that their voice program doesn't get a bad reputation.
However, reading this little rule got me thinking: Can you think of any other business that restricts their customers as much as a Christian university? Could any other company get away with telling their customers what movies they could see, what music they could listen to, what clothes they could wear, what businesses they could patronize, what churches they could attend, and, until quite recently, what races they could date?
I'm not complaining. I understand the reasoning behind most of the rules here. I just think it's interesting to see how different the rules look when you remember that students are customers, not subjects. They are free to come and go at will, and no one can force the student to stay against his will.
Of course, most, if not all, BJU customers come into the deal knowing what the restrictions in the contract are, and they still attend, even with the presence of several other high-quality universities in a fifty-mile radius. A high-quality education is not what draws customers to BJU; if that was the only factor, then the customer would go to one of the nearby institutions with fewer restrictions.
No, in strange sort of way, the famous restrictions are part of what draws the average customer in the first place. The primary attraction of BJU is that it is a high-quality Christian university. The customer is seeking a high-quality education in a morally-pure environment. There's no binge drinking, there's no multi-day frat parties, there's no peer pressure to enter into sexual relationships, there's not open use of drugs.
Instead, the customer can focus on education and on character-building. And I'm seriously starting to sound like BJU campaign literature.
The point is that this atmosphere, which is brought about by A) a student body mostly consisting of people interested in doing what's right and B) strict rules to control those who aren't, is the primary competitive advantage of the university.
So, why would a customer come to BJU if he was part of group B that didn't care about following the University's standard of morality? My theory is that there's another factor that affects his decision: Parental pressure. Parents are major influencers in the customer's college decision, because they have a unique ability to make the customer miserable or happy later on in life. The parent-child relationship is not severed lightly; the customer may decide that it's easier to put up with restrictive rules on his behavior for four years rather than risk permanent damage to his relationship with his parents.
Now, I'm by no means saying that anyone who complains about the rules at BJU is immoral and only there at the behest of their parents. There's a third category: Those who are interested in doing what's right, but who believe the university's restrictions are too strict, that the shock collar is on too tight. (I'm now removing my tongue from my cheek.) They stay because, although they're unhappy with certain rules, they're generally happy with the product they're getting--the clean atmosphere.
Now, what's BJU's motivation for maintaining rules that many students consider to be unnecessarily strict? First, the staff is trying to do what they believe is right according to the Bible. Economically speaking, they suffer a loss in satisfaction when their conscience is bothered by removing a rule that has a generally positive effect, but is a bit restrictive to the students.
Secondly, from a business standpoint, they need to protect their competitive advantage. If BJU lifts too many of its restrictions, then the atmosphere of moral purity is contaminated and they become no different from schools like Harvard that once called themselves Christian but are no longer. This is why BJU is extremely slow to change any of its rules, and why it took them years of outside pressure to finally repeal the interracial dating ban: If they change too quickly, then they risk contamination.
But notice that they did change the rule. When the administration is sufficiently convinced that a given rule is unnecessary or wrong, then they change the rule. They change slowly and cautiously, but they do change when they believe it's right.
Anyways, the marginal utility of spending the time to write a decent conclusion to this post is exceeded by the marginal utility of making a good grade on my test tomorrow. Good night.
Posted by Blog Jones at November 22, 2004 09:06 PM
| Category: BJU Stuff