Public school administrators like it or not, may not schedule prayers in classrooms. When the Supreme Court thus decreed, many educators approved, some churchmen applauded.
Since that amazing decision, an epidemic of revolt has swept our campuses. While a direct connection is not provable, there is much circumstantial evidence to indict the Supreme Court for disrupting campus decorum. For now in the name of all hooligans are kinds of freedom young intimidating educators.
They parade pornography in the name of "free speech."
They incite riots while claiming "freedom of assembly."
Some known subversives thus hide behind our Constitution while they seek to set fire to it.
Less ominous symptoms of rebellion nonetheless have far-reaching implications in undermining constituted authority:
"I won't shave and you can't make met" "I won't cut my hair! .... I'll wear a bikini to class if I like; this is a free country!"
And administrators don't dare fight back; they might lose their federal aid.
Recently, I was invited to speak on the campus of Florida College, Tampa, Florida. What a refreshing experience. Florida College is unwilling to pay the terrible price of federal aid, is entirely self-sustaining.
Florida College operates industries, pays taxes on those industries, and lives on the profits of those industries.
I toured the woodwork shop, staffed by students. And the hydroponic garden where they're growing a cash crop of tomatoes without soil. A print shop prospers and profits the college.
Thus is this college becoming Self-sufficient. No federal money. No federal intervention.
And this way they can prescribe a code of campus conduct for faculty and students--and those who don't like it can go elsewhere.
Florida's faculty can teach that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God, the only prescription for a life hereafter and, at the same time, the best rule book for a good life here.
The words of the president of that college, James Cope, afford a yardstick for measuring the cost the rest of us pay for accepting government money.
"We want a school where college students learn right and wrong while they learn about science, literature and other matters; where manhood is identified because of its respect for womanhood, not for panty raids and telephone booth squeezes; where womanhood is identified with virtue and refinement, not by non-virginity clubs and back alley coarseness; where the sanctity of the home is upheld rather than scoffed at by infidel professors advocating free love; where Americanism is identified by respect for the Stars and Stripes rather than by compliments for the Hammer and Sickle; where the capitalistic system is presented with appreciation rather than apology; where prayer is an occasion for acknowledging God rather than its absence being an occasion for denying Him; and where the Bible, the Word of God, is not belittled -- but believed."
TRUTH MAGAZINE XIV: 23, p. 11
April 16, 1970
