During a meeting with Delta Zeta’s national leadership concerning their decision to deactivate specific members of the Delta Chapter based on sexist and racist notions of attractiveness in order to reinvigorate the chapter, one DePauw administrator politely told them that such strategies might have worked on other campuses, “but they will not fly here.” Delta Zeta’s national leadership had carried out these targeted deactivations on many other campuses in the past, but DePauw students did not let it fly; Delta Zeta was eventually removed from DePauw’s campus. Wednesday’s events echo a similar justice. While these “extremist Christian protestors” might have been able to spread a message of hate on other campuses without a fight, DePauw did not let that fly. DePauw’s students made me proud. However, as an ordained reverend and prison chaplain, I am disappointed in the Christian response to the event. I have read several responses from Christians defending the protest as “un-Christian,” but I have heard of little action from the same community regarding the violent detainment/ abuse/ humiliation of two black DePauw men by law enforcement. Rather than defending Christianity on a campus that is, at least when I was student, completely safe for it, we should be standing with those black and brown community members who are under constant threat of racial injustice. We, as Christians, should demand that the officers involved be held accountable for their actions. Show me again how DePauw’s community will not let injustice fly.
-Rev. George Schmidt, Class of 2007