What the crap is happening in Shawnee?

It seems lately, that i'm hearing nothing but bad news about the alma mater. Today is no exception.

From what I can gather, here's what happened:

PR director ZK wrote a letter to the local newspaper, in which he stated in no uncertain terms his concerns for the motives behind the new building project of one of the town's oldest churchs. ZK asserted that they were moving from a economically lower-class area to a higher-class one, possibly based on racial or social reasons. ZK pulled no punches in his editorial, and while a little heavy-handed, I don't think it's necessarily unfair.

As it turns out, the president of the university attends that church.

It's not too hard to imagine what happened next.

As has been their practice in the past (necessarily, I assume), the school is deafeningly silent on the matter.

(Chalk this up with the "drunk Laura" debacle as yet another thing the Powers That Be won't discuss.)

Now the question online is, did Oklahoma Baptist University do wrong by "asking him to resign"? And in the view of several, yes, absolutely.

I must interject here that I don't know all the facts of the story. While an OBU alum, I never really knew much about ZK or his job performance. There have been hints floating that this incident is one in a long string of offenses. I don't know if that's true, but I don't know if it's not, either.

At any rate, as the facts seem to be presented (granted, again, from arguably biased sources), this looks very, very bad for the university. If the implications of this are in any way accurate, I'm incredibly disappointed in the President B, the administration, and all other parties involved.

This isn't the first time that a former school of mine has undergone some difficult times regarding the alleged muzzling of dissention. And I'm familiar with the "asked to resign" situation, too, so I may be biased against institutions that do this.

As it stands, this is another reason for me to be saddened by the OBU I used to know, that doesn't exist anymore. Maybe it never did.

Either way, I'm disappointed.



(Wow. I just found out that Mr. Todd got fired, also. Can someone fill me in on what happened there? The story I heard was that he was fired for "offending students." I can only imagine.)


(Many thanks to alert [and, hopefully, returning] reader Sarah for the head's-up.)