The Niel World: Where Covenant Alumni Stop Being Polite and Start Getting Niel

I'd be interested to hear some of the questions asked and specific answers he had.

Anything come to mind?

Josiah, thanks for your thoughts. I really wish I could have been there, but I took comfort in the fact that you and a few other alum who really love the college (and that I respect) were going to be there.

Like you, I truly respect Nielson. He is both smart and gracious and does care about the college. However, I am afraid that in his concern for the bottom-line he misses a significant portion of the beauty of Covenant. I understand that he is in a tough position, but I'm not sure I agree with all of his decisions. For example, he and the development team are trying to balance the books by adding students. While that may be a good short term solution, long-term Covenant (I almost said "we") cannot depend on continued student growth to maintain the financial status. But I digress--that is just one particular concern I have.

The challenge in all of this is to not just be critical, but to provide both constructive criticism and viable alternatives (to the extent that we can, without the intimate knowledge of the inner-workings of the college). I am concerned because I care about Covenant, and I want my concern and the concerns of other alumni to be helpful, not just dead weight pulling the college down.

Siah,

Do you think the relationships at Covenant are unique to Covenant, though? How would that factor be unique from, say, Wheaton, Calvin, or even Harding?

I've got friends at several Christian colleges, and none of them report anything like the community that exists at Covenant. I've heard stories of goings on at other Christian schools that Student Development under Scheur and Raymond would have been all over, being resolved instead with restraining orders and no administration involvement. I've never heard anyone indicate the level of interest in students as people that those two demonstrated, nor have I heard of student life personel so self-consciously devoted to promoting and encouraging community as opposed to simply maintaining order and low liability insurance premiums. In other schools, RAs and RDs are there to make sure that no one gets hurt, and that if someone does, there's a responsible party around to get stuff done. At Covenant, there was always the desire to actively foster community, but I fear that has gone with the change of administration.

As far as I've been able to tell, student life at Christian colleges is much like student life at secular colleges, but without many of the normal undergraduate pasttimes like binge drinking and orgies. But at Covenant there is (was?) something different: a concerted effort to engage people and creative methods of growing in maturity as Christians. I feel like Nielson has done an exemplary job in quashing both of those things. He's a smooth operator, no doubt about it, and he's never had an issue with civility, but the last year and a half of my Covenant experience was a long, drawn out story of cherished activities and traditions being shut-down by nebulous authoritarian directives which - I assume - stemmed from his office. He never felt the need to communicate any of this to any of the students, and was content to let underlings do his enforcement, but anyone who thought about things for any length of time knew what was going on: Niel. B. had some plan he was working on, some conception of the way the Christian life was supposed to be lived, and enforcing that vision was more important than sharing it with the students.

I agree with Ryan on this one. The question is not who best understands the inner workings of Covenant College but who can best lead the school forward. The purpose of last night's meeting should not have been to get a better feel for the size of Covenant's financial woes, but how best to deal with them. It is not incredibly difficult to understand the problem, it IS incredibly difficult to know the best way forward.
It has taken two years for staff, faculty, students and alumni to learn the direction President Nielson wants to take Covenant. The question for us is: do we agree with him. Josiah says he doesn't necessarily agree with President Nielson's goals yet is continent to watch Nielson do his thing. I believe it is our responsibility to be actively involved in seeking to determine the best way forward for Covenant. When we are uncomfortable with certain decisions it is our duty to voice our concerns and see what can be done to correct the situation.
It is begining to come clear that numerous individuals do not agree with the administration's leadership and would propose a different course. It is interesting to note that such individuals were not present at last night's meeting. In essence during the process of trying to determine the best way for Covenant to grow in the future only one party was allowed at the table. I'm not sure that is the best way to conduct a debate.

See Ellis, and Ryan, I'm kindof a believer in the "if you don't know what you're talking about, don't talk, or at least mention it before you speak." And quite Frankly none of us know how to run a college or even have equivalent experience that might give us the necessary skillz to run the college.

But I also don't mean to say that folks oughta shutup or anything like that, we just outta be careful and thoughtful in how we formulate our questions, because odds are, the very intelligent people leading Covenant College have thought long and hard about some of the tough issues (as Nielson showed last night, in my opinion) and made some tough decisions.

Now you can disagree with those decisions, but you can't say that they weren't thought about long and hard by intelligent, talented, and God-fearing men.

And now, I think that's awesome that you think you need to be actively involved in figuring out the best way forward. You go. What's awesome is that you can't do a damn thing about it.

And last night wasn't meant to be a debate, it was meant to be a forum to pick the brain o' Nielson. So in that sense, it was sucessful. I certainly felt like I learned alot, and for the first time came to see Dr. Nielson as a real person who really felt and thought and struggled long and hard about things. I may disagree with him, but I can't help but respect him in principle and spirit.

And to be frank, I'm fairly certain that Covenant's woes (at least the ones I care about), to a large extent, are outside of the control of President Nielson. The PCA is rapidly becoming a large, rich white denomination. Bland. Boring. Even its theology is status quo and about as existentially challenging as the Auburn Avenue debate. So I don't think Covenant can HELP becoming the Presbyterian Wheaton. It's not like Nielson has the incoming students to do otherwise.

Ryan, I think it's unfair to pose the whole student development culture at the college as an either-or situation: either we're "self-consciously devoted to promoting and encouraging community" or we're "simply maintaining order and low liability insurance premiums." Effective rhetorical maneuver, perhaps ... but not fair.

I think what the current administration at Covenant is after is a both-and. I have never heard anyone up there question the commitment of previous student life employees to students, community, etc. However, I think there is a desire to see student life encourage students to hold themselves to--and, when necessary, hold them to--the community standards that students agree to abide by when they matriculate at Covenant (whether they think those standards silly or not).

I'd love to learn more--off the record, perhaps when you next get down this way--about what kinds of "cherished activities and traditions" were quashed in your last year-and-a-half on the mountain. Certainly, if they were healthy, they shouldn't have been quashed (and I think that NBN would be the first to tell you that he and other administrators have made mistakes in the time they've been at the helm). However, less-than-healthy traditions don't make for good community and don't contribute to growth in grace (well ... except for in the sense that where sin abounds, there does grace about much more ... but that's not really a good principle to build a student life program on)..

Ellis, the forum was only supposed to be a chance for local alumni to ask questions of Nielson and raise concerns. All local alumni were invited, including those who hold positions on the faculty and staff. I know for a fact that some folks in that category have questions about present developments at the college. They chose not to come. You should also know that faculty and staff are given opportunity to interact with Nielson via faculty and staff meetings, and he has a pretty generous policy regarding meeting with folks with questions (I know because I've taken advantage of it).

Josiah, I wonder if you'd articulate what you sense to be Nielson's vision, and what about it concerns you? You asked a very telling question at the forum regarding the cost of a Covenant education--but that's more a practical matter than a vision matter. (By the way, when you mentioned students being priced out of the college, I was reminded of older alumni I know who have complained about folks being "smarted out"--that is, while they (the alumni) might have been able to attend when standards at the college were lower, they worry that their kids won't be "smart" enough because academic standards have risen. Is that a bad thing? Should Covenant be the PCA's community college?)

Ryan and Ellis, I'd encourage you both to continue to ask questions. In fact, I'd derive great personal satisfaction from your peppering Paul Nedelisky with queries. NBN needs to hear from alumni, and he needs for people to ask him tough questions. Every leader does. Nielson mentioned specifically that the greatest challenge he has faced in his time at the college is communicating effectively with such a wide array of constituencies--alumni, faculty, staff, students, prospective students, prospective parents, current parents, past parents, pastors, youth pastors, high school administrators, guidance counselors, other college presidents, etc. He knows that college communications are not what they should be, and I think last night's forum was an effort to begin to address that problem again (Covenant has a proud history of moving in starts and fits, you know). As alumni who care, encourage the conversation.

I have mixed feelings with my whole Covenant experience, I think because I kept managing to run into the messed up side of the administration's thinking ("what, the chemicals that you have to clean the bathrooms with could give you an asthma attack and could kill you? that doesn't matter, all freshman MUST do practical service with BEST, Americans with Disabilities Act be damned" or "what? you mean to say that you aren't going to be happy when we change the number of work study hours you're allowed after you've signed the contract and we don't tell you?"). Maybe if I had felt more in the caring-about-student's department I would be unhappy about the changes, but at this point, I'm glad to see that NBN is running a tighter ship.

Hi Derek! Looks like you've found a good niche for yourself. (I remember DH's student days, folks, and am accepting generous cash donations to spill embarrasing stories. ;-> )

Chattanooga's actually improved so much since my Scot days that we'd actually want to live there now. Imagine that!

I'm impressed with NBN's stewardship of Covenant and am even more impressed he offers an open forum to alumni agitators like yours truly. After all, the state and/or direction of Covenant has very little (if any) impact on my life now -- my only worry is that it'll be an option for my daughter when the time comes, yes, some 16 years from now.

Whatever they offer you, I will outbid them to keep those stories under lock and key.