The Wokeness Continues: Grove City College Update

Grove City College, the CRT Controversy, and Why the Update Matters

Hey everyone, welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. This is an episode about Grove City College. It's somewhat listener generated. I had a request to review a particular podcast that was recorded at Grove City College which I'd like to go through at least a few of the clips.

It's about an hour and I think 17 minutes or so. So we can't go through the whole thing but I'll bring you to some choice sections so you can get the gist of what was being communicated there. And really this relates to a controversy that's been ongoing since I believe it was early last fall when, or maybe it was late summer, I think it was early fall when I found out about it.

But the issue was and is still whether or not Grove City College and the administration there approved of critical race theory being taught in the chapels, being taught in some course content, and then also being taught to the RAs I believe on campus.

And so three major different areas. Now this has taken on a life of its own, interestingly enough. And the way that this has gone down, broadly speaking, is the administration at Grove City College and many of the professors, including Carl Truman who's a very prominent professor there, have put up the defense shields and tried to either minimize, to the point that essentially they're bending truth, they're lying, what's happened there, or and claiming that there really isn't a problem and that it's these haters, it's these horrible people mostly on the internet who have made a problem where there was no problem.

And it's very similar to the way Southern Baptist schools have reacted when they've been called out on the carpet. Now the difference I think is that in Southern Baptist circles there is such a strong guild mentality, allegiance to the Southern Baptist Convention, reliance on the Southern Baptist Convention, not wanting to rock the boat in the Southern Baptist Convention because that could prohibit someone in the future from getting paid positions and all the accolades that come with that, that the wagons are circled not just in the school but also in the denomination and among all the other entities.

And so just about. So there's a concerted effort right away to identify and disparage or try to marginalize somehow anyone who would speak out against or even just shine a light and say this is happening at one of their institutions of higher learning.

And so it's kind of like antibodies viewing the person who says this as the virus, the school blower is the virus, there's a threat and let's all gang up. And then others see that example and then they're really hesitant to say anything.

And that's kind of it's very it's intimidation driven. And within the SBC, the SBC is basically a big bubble. It's not people outside the SBC aren't necessarily as astute on SBC politics or even interested in that kind of thing.

And so trying to reform from the inside is almost impossible. That's the conclusion I've come to. It's just about impossible to do that from within the denomination. And there's probably a variety of other factors I could talk about that also lead me to think that.

But with Grove City, it's a little different. It's a smaller school. And there is a connection to political conservatism. At least there has been historically. In fact, I consider going to Grove City College for undergrad.

It was one of those schools that prided itself on not taking federal funds. I believe there's only two. I think it's Grove City College and then also, what's the college in Michigan, Hillsdale. I believe those are the two that don't do that.

And so they had a reputation for being not just Christian, but also politically conservative. But they're supposed to be both. And so I think because that's a larger group of people, and they don't have the same necessarily allegiance to Grove City College, the brand, unless maybe you went there or you're a donor or something like that, you might have some allegiance.

But broadly speaking, political conservatives, they don't rely on Grove City College for any kind of privileges that they would need. And if they said anything, they would get canceled. There's room for saying negative things, at least if you're outside the institution, which many of the people who have said something are.

And so I think that is a different dynamic. I think the other thing is that Grove City College itself doesn't have all the resources that the Southern Baptist Convention has to try to fight something like that.

And so the logical thing, I've said this from the beginning, the logical thing is just to be honest about where you were wrong. People mess up, people make mistakes, and admit those things. But instead, because they've been so defensive, and they've in various ways attacked at least members of the administration, attacked people who have just pointed out the truth of the situation, it has wound up in now where it's totally, it's just, it's messy.

It's just totally messy. And it's created all kinds of doubt and mistrust and instability that didn't ever need to be there. And this is, in my opinion, this is just on Grove City College. This is, they could have avoided a lot of this, but they, for whatever reason, and perhaps pride is the motivation here, you know, we wouldn't make mistakes, we're professionals.

I don't know fully what all the motives are. That's the one that the only one that seems to make sense of their behavior in my mind, because it's so, it just comes across as so arrogant. But that's where we are now, where the people who see clearly and say, well, I saw the clips, I've seen the poster, I've seen evidence here that suggests or at least proves actually that Grove City College has had some compromise in this area.

Now they don't trust the administration. And so this is it's a messy situation. So why talk about it? Well, number one, I've talked about it before, so it's just a continuation of a previous discussion.

Number two, I think this is a place where change can happen more easily than an SBC school or maybe some of the other schools that have been challenged on this. I think there there there is a potential for leveraging the the outside previous or what was and still is to some extent the support that Grove City College had, the donors, the reputation they had.

I think there is a way perhaps with Grove City College to actually reform the college. And it's let's be honest, it's a test case. American reformer Megan Basham, the Daily Rioter, you know, both of these institutes, these entities came out and said something.

And that's pressure that an SBC school hasn't really gotten from outside. They haven't had the daily wire going after Southeastern or something like that. So it's more it's a different kind of pressure.

It's more pressure. And and there's there's an investigation as well. So I just I think that they're taking this as bad as the response has been. They're taking this a little more seriously. And I think people are watching, myself included, to see what actually happens is is reform possible at at what was supposed to be one of the most conservative schools in the country?

Colleges is reform even possible there? And if it is, that's an encouraging thing, I think that, OK, maybe we can learn from this and others can can go and try to reform their schools, maybe in a similar way.

Maybe it looks different. I don't know. But it's it we haven't seen a lot of we haven't seen a lot of reform because the real virus is not the people who are saying there's a problem. In fact, those people, from everything I understand, most of those people, if not all, they love the school.

I've been talking to people from within the school at times who love the school and they just they care about it. They don't want to see it go down this path. And the virus isn't those people. The virus is the teaching that they've allowed to take root there.

And some of the people that they've invited to come to chapel and speak and some of the people they're employing, even they're currently who are advocating these kinds of things. If that's if there's a threat, that's the threat.

And so that's anyway, that's that they may not be a threat to the institution in the minds of the administrators, but they actually are. They and more importantly, the institution doesn't really matter as much as the truth and the kingdom of God.

And they should, I would think, at a Christian school, they should have more allegiance to Christianity than they do to the institution, whatever that is, that that's going to burn. Right. That's not something that we take into eternity.

Of course, the impact of an institution certainly has eternal effects, but the institution is not the one that we should have allegiance to. Primarily, it's the Lord Jesus Christ and then his truth. And we don't compromise on that.

That that's that's where I'm coming down on this. So I just want to give you an update. And hopefully this helps to maybe encourage some of you, but also to expose some things that need exposing and the speech that I'm going to take clips from or the podcast episode.

It doesn't have to be Grove City. This is representative of what is going on at a lot of Christian institutions and schools. And so I think it might be helpful from that standpoint, even if you don't care about what's happening in Grove City.

Well, maybe this is happening in a school near you. And so reviewing it might might help that example. And how would you respond? That's a question that often gets asked. So I'll show you in some ways maybe how I would respond or how I would think through some of the words you're about to hear.

Revisiting the Grove City College Petition and the President’s Response

So first, let's go through a trip down memory lane. This is a an account on Twitter called Old McConnell. There's actually another account and that account is called CRT at GCC. Both of these are on Twitter.

And I don't know if they have links on other social media websites because I really don't like using Twitter, but I'm pretty sure that this is the I'm pretty sure that this is the the the best place, at least that I know of, to to find updates on these things.

I know Josh Abatoy at the American Reformer will often talk about this issue as well. But here's what Old McConnell, this Twitter account, stated about this issue. A lot has happened over the past five months.

Ree, the Grove City College controversy. But one document tells the story in a nutshell. GCC President McNulty's response to the critical race theory petition. This thread revisits that statement in light of what we know now.

And I think this is 100 percent right. I did a whole podcast on President McNulty's response to the petition that parents had. And it was horrible. It was just horrible. It was insulting. It was it just wasn't true.

It was terrible. And in light of what's come out, because what's come out now is, well, hey, nothing to see here. And then people are finding, oh, there's all this this stuff over here to see. And there's this over here to see.

And there's and all kinds of things are coming out. I haven't covered all of them, but I'll cover one of them today. And so this has promoted more mistrust. This is this has really shown that President McNulty's defense was it was really poor, poorly chosen words and a bad strategy.

So here's the trip down memory lane. Reminder concerned parents frustrated by campus programs that didn't match the college's state admission and advertised image launched a public petition that received 478 signatures in a week.

McNulty's response, the president there has an age well as combative tone further antagonized the petitioners, which guaranteed a prolonged dispute. And his pronouncements against Grove City College were gradually disproven by additional evidence.

McNulty began by stating why he has decided to issue a formal response before receiving the petition. He says the petition included misinformed assertions and that that unfairly threatened the reputation of Grove City College.

This statement implies, number one, the parents don't know what they're talking about. Number two, their actions are hurting the college's reputation. This unnecessarily placed McNulty in opposition to the parents and suggested bad faith on their part.

I'm going to stop here. This is what's going on, not just at Grove City or at Christian institutions is what is happening all over this country. In fact, even tonight in the local school board in town over from me is having a whole discussion about a book that was in the school's library that fortunately this particular high school decided to get rid of.

But now there's pushback and now and other districts have decided to keep this book. And and this kind of thing is happening all over. And often the school administration is saying nothing to see here and the parents and they're placing themselves against the parents.

And that's it's a losing position. It's a losing. It's just bad. But but President McNulty has done the same thing that these secular administrators have done and principals at high schools and colleges that are mostly high schools, really, that are secular.

So it's interesting to me to see this dynamic going on here. Next, McNulty lists Grove City College's vision, mission and values to demonstrate the college isn't capitulating to cultural headwinds. He doesn't mention that two significant phrases, Christian worldview and conservative values, were just removed from the statements.

See, I don't even know about this. This is new to me. So, like I said, there's there's little things popping up all over the place, like, hey, why why did you remove those those terms from the mission statement?

McNulty also states that humans are made in the image of God and should not be defined by ideological categories. Additional evidence shows the campus program officers named in this statement did, in fact, define students by ideological categories.

He says next. The section this next section strongly implies that the parents petition is an attack based on misimpressions, partial reports, hearsay rumors and other unreliable information. So accusing the parents that they're bearing false witness, McNulty then avoids real issues by answering questions not asked.

Petition. The petition was concerned with critical presentation with uncritical, I should say, presentation of CRT and wokeness. McNulty defends Christian engagement and social issues. He quotes Carl Truman, who later uses the same tactic by arguing Grove City College isn't fully woke.

And I read some of those two. They were terrible, absolutely terrible. It just for someone who is apparently as smart as Carl Truman, it's either you can only have really two two options. And either you're you're being disingenuous with the truth or you're ignorant.

And ignorance is just it's a hard pill to swallow. It's like this is the institution you work for. Like, how can you know so little about and be so sure of so many erroneous things about the institution you're at when you're so good on things outside that institution?

That's a bad thing. It goes on. It says the previous section essentially implied the parents are liars who didn't handle their concerns in a Christian way. At this point in the statement, one expects McNulty to present unassailable evidence to back such a strong rebuke to the parents character and claims.

Instead, what follows is a selective defense that addresses narrow points to give the impression that no CRT problem exists, but leaves out important context indicating otherwise. For example, McNulty says CRT was never mentioned or advocated in chapel.

Now, here's actually it's quoting to it's linking to a montage of different chapel speakers that I put together. And it says Tisby, Jamar Tisby's talk was about was a two was part of a larger two week program on social justice.

And one of the chaplains called for students to join the resistance. It's horrible, by the way. If you watch this whole thing, you'll just see, wow, OK, yeah, like race theory was in the chapel. McNulty next says there is a significant amount of misunderstanding about the Office of Multicultural Education Initiatives.

Later, he admits that the that involvement in our trainings, that they were involved in our trainings and the event focused on white privilege also discovered. And they have some screenshots here. In fact, look, check this out.

There's a poster. Let's talk about race series, white people, a documentary. Come and join and watch with us from the Office of Multicultural Education and Initiatives, which if you go, you can watch that on YouTube.

It's it's not a good documentary. McNulty says Diversity Council only focused on recruiting minority students and isn't operational. Yet the college's own press release says that it was established to broaden perspectives and enrich campus culture.

This is the same thing, by the way, happened at Southeastern with Kingdom Diversity Initiative. And that's it was the defense, too. It's like, well, we're just helping out disenfranchised students. That's all it is.

In fact, Danny Akin says in this book on racism that he compares himself to his mom. His mom would give a student a ride who was black. And this was years. This is when he was a kid. And someone asked, why did you give that student a ride?

I said, well, because he needed a ride. And Danny says, well, that's why we put up Kingdom Diversity, because some people they they need a ride, basically, which, of course, is totally different. It's not on the basis of needing a ride that you're because because if it was that it would be economics driven or, you know, it's instead on the basis of your your race, but then also whether or not you're going to be an activist, because I've seen the questions that are asked.

You have to promote diversity on campus. Or at least prove that you you have a history of promoting diversity. So it's not enough to be black or Hispanic or Asian. You have to show that you've you've promoted diversity in your life.

And that's what they're looking for. But it's beyond that. They produce podcasts and host events and they have money for all kinds of things. And that's it's the same thing at Grove City College. Their their office that does has a similar function.

It's not just about giving scholarships away. It's it's about promoting an agenda. Absolutely. So next, McNulty's sidestep CRT activism course, Education 290, stating academic leadership will address the issue on a case by case basis.

Basis books by Kendi and D 'Angelo remain in the spring 2002 22 installment with co instructor and Cedric Lewis. Cedric Lewis claims he hasn't changed a thing. So they are teaching at Grove City College right now.

And one of the courses, White Fragility and How to Be an Antiracist. These are both critical race theory books. McNulty concludes by highlighting Western civilization requirement in Grove City College's core curriculum.

In actuality, the crime that was recently reduced in the entire core is under review by a committee, including many people involved in the CRT controversy. Parents petition actually understated the CRT problem at Grove City College.

Question was McNulty unaware of these incidents, or did he knowingly display downplay the issues and chastise parents for publicly identifying them? McNulty concludes with more conciliatory tone. The parents are collaborators who share an unwavering commitment to the college's mission that is difficult to square with his earlier combativeness.

One wonders how the statement might have read if this was his approach throughout. If McNulty had engaged concerned parents as partners who wanted what's best for the kids and Grove City College, the CRT issues might have been resolved quick and positively.

Here's hoping that the Grove City College board can write the ship. A formal apology to parents would be a good start. And that's, I think, the big thing. That's the big thing. You can't just say, you have to admit that there's something went wrong, that even if it's slight in your mind, you have to admit it as administrators.

We goofed or we weren't aware or something has to, you have to apologize to now, because now the parents have, they've been sinned against. They've been mischaracterized. They've been lied about in this characterization by Paul McNulty.

They need to be apologized to. They had legitimate concerns. Those concerns are rooted in objective fact. And those who should know the most about this situation, the president and those at the school are the ones, the very ones who seem to be either the most ignorant of it or the ones willing to cover it up.

So corruption and CRT, in my mind, they just go hand in hand. I've seen this over and over and over. So what do we do about all this? What do we, and the real, I believe there's actually my, from the last I checked, there was an investigation that's currently, I think it's still ongoing.

I think the board is investigating just to see, hey, were there problems? Is there anything to this petition the parents put out? So pray for that. We'll see what happens. I wanted to introduce to you something else though.

And this is what I was asked to review. This is a podcast put out by, let's see here. This is, I guess it must be a club on campus. Let me see if I can, I should have had this queued up here. I thought for some reason that all the info was there.

I think it's on the CRT at GCC. I think they have a whole thing on it. Yeah, it's right here. Okay, so this is a podcast at Grove City College called One Story by Arianna Nelson. Now, and I don't know whether or not this had the sanction of the school.

I'm assuming it must have because they are holding events. So it's either a club that sponsored it or maybe the campus itself. It's probably a club, but they, I mean, she remarks at the beginning, they had a big crowd there and they're at Grove City College.

And they're talking about Grove City College, broadly speaking. So this took place at the college. And what's important to all this is Chris Merrick happens to be the Assistant Director of Residence Life and the Resident Director of Kettler Hall in Resident Life.

So this is someone who is employed by Grove City College, working there with the, I guess it would be the RAs. And I believe, yeah, Christopher Merrick is one of the ones in that montage, speaking in Chapel, who really put some pro CRT type stuff out there.

Now, here's a longer podcast. And I want to play for you some clips from this podcast. And we'll review them as we go. Because these are indicative, representative of what we're hearing around us and what we have heard around us.

And I think it also shows though that, yes, this problem at Grove City College went beyond just a few chapel sessions. And it's very aware. You're very aware after listening to something like this in its fullness, that, wow, okay, there's a problem there.

Minority Experience, White Privilege, and Double Standards

All right, so I'm just going to play some short clips from this particular podcast and just give you a sense of what's going on. So I'm going to start here about eight minutes in, eight and a half minutes in for this interview with Chris Merrick.

So you said that the cons way heavier than the pros. Yeah. So with that in mind, why do you think it's so important that people know what, like, or at least hear what it feels like to be a minority?

Because I think no one apparently likes to be mistreated, right? Like raise your hand if you like being treated like trash. Like no one, no, no one enjoys that, right? Like no one, no one enjoys to be disrespected.

No one enjoys to be marginalized. And so I think for me, like, I'm not a student here, right? And so like, I don't think people are brazen enough to say something until they say to their peers.

All right. So he goes on, he talks about how bad it is to be a black person, the negative things associated with that. And so this is strong language. He says, basically, you're treated like trash. That's, that's his direct quote.

You're treated like trash. And he's talking about Grove City College, though, included here. Because the very next thing is, well, people aren't brazen enough to say the things to me that they would say to their friends.

So, you know, I don't hear all the slurs and the things that I would normally, that people want to say to me because I'm not a student. I'm in a position of authority, basically. But that's what it is to be a black person, including at Grove City College.

That's what he's saying here. I don't go to Grove City College. Maybe some Grove City College parents and students can pipe in here. And then you can tell me who's attacking Grove City College or who's, if this isn't true.

If you're a minority, are you treated like trash at Grove City College? Is that accurate? If you're not, if that doesn't actually represent what happens at Grove City College, then you have a guy who's being paid by the college on staff there who is fine characterizing the college this way.

And yet the administration doesn't see him as a threat. That, isn't that interesting? I just didn't find that interesting. So he talks on about that for a while. I want to go to a section a little later here where they talk about white privilege.

So he's getting done sharing a story here of when he was in college and how there was someone who used, I think it was an abbreviation or an acronym that included the N word. And applied it to him. And it was someone who he was supposedly, this person thought that he was friends with Chris and Merrick.

And it was this horrible, horrible thing. And he talks about the way that the school reacted to it. And really the people, there wasn't anyone who approved of it. That, I mean, his pastor was against it.

The school did something about it. His friends were all defensive of him. And no one approved of this. It's a guy who said something she shouldn't have said. And so this is what he has to say though, after telling the story.

Let me stop here. This is a question he's asked. Think about this. This is a person who just said that you're treated like trash. Even in Grove City College, if you're a minority, that's what it's like to be a minority.

Well, what does that mean? Well, it means the other people. It means white people are the ones that are treating someone like trash. That's who they are, right? So you can characterize them like this, or that this is the status quo, this is regular life, normal life for someone who's a minority there.

And yet, then a story in which it's, according to Chris Merritt, what this young student did was, who apparently he says was annoyed, was trying to study. Chris and his friends were being obnoxious. This kid said something he shouldn't have said, and then no one's supporting that kid.

They're all against what he did. The administration's against what he did. His pastor's against what he did. His friends are against what he did. That's somehow evidence that there's white privilege, because someone can say something, even though they're condemned for it, because they can say it.

But you can go and you'd say that, well, you're treated like trash if you're a minority, and that's not evidence of anything. It's just, if you flipped all of this, it would sound funny to our ears, I think.

If you was a white person that's like, well, yeah, you know, who wants to be treated like trash? And if you are in the inner city and you're white, you're treated like trash. And that's how those people treat you.

That you'd probably be accused of racism. And if someone said something against white people like that, or called them white trash, right, what would happen? To them, would it be the same kind of reaction, right?

So this is how one of the indicators, how you know that there's a double standard being employed, which critical race theory totally is based on a double standard. It's obviously influenced from Marxism and postmodernism, but the whole idea is that you drill down even deep into our language and our conception of knowledge, and as deep as you can go, and there's power dynamics at work, and it's white people oppressing black people or minorities.

And so we have to adjust everything to help those minorities reach a status of equality somehow by redistributing money, or it might just be redistributing privilege and platforming and all that. So it's a double standard at the end.

You have to view people according to their race for this to work, and then that's how the justice comes in. And so one of the ways you recognize it is by seeing a double standard come out, which we're already kind of starting to see here.

Now, I wanna hear his answer here. Let's listen to this. This is Chris Merrick, who works at Grove City College, explaining what white privilege is and the evidence for it.

I'm not white. It's hard for me to tell someone how they should feel. But again, with my little interaction, right, like I'm very, and I think, right, like we all, to some degree, I'm very, like, I'm not that old, right?

Like I'm not even 30 yet, right? And so I have a very limited world view. But I think in my mind, why, and again, right, you can correct me if you're wrong, because you're white, you're a white man, right?

But I think when I've interacted with white people who have such a hard time with white privilege, one or two things happen. They feel this personal attack on them as if they created this privilege, which I don't think current white people have created.

They definitely create the system, but they benefit from the system. And I think when you tell them, when they hear that, they hear that you're saying that they're wrong. And especially white people who want to help.

And want to engage. That's kind of a punch to the gut. And there's this weird tension of you, them not wanting to own up to their privilege, right? And so, like, and we all have privileges to some degree, right?

Like as a man, I have a privilege, and I know that, right? And there are certain things that I get because I'm a man, right? I know when I walk in the room, like, you don't look, you don't get attention, right?

And so, and I think the reason why white privilege is so difficult, because it says that you got to look at yourself, and you got to say, hey, I'm a part of a systemic issue in our country. And again, right?

I think when people hear, like, when they hear that phrase, that term, they, some people just don't want to face that music, right? Like, I think when you become a believer, right? In order to acknowledge that you know Jesus, you have to admit that you're wrong.

And we inherently do not want to do that as people. Like, we don't want to admit that we have problems, right? And so, like, when you have something so charged as white privilege, especially in today's world, you're like, yo, like, just because you're a white individual, you benefit from these systems.

And it doesn't mean that you don't work hard, right? Like I, like my friends, like my, their grandparents, like, they work really hard, right? It doesn't mean that you're lazy. I think that's what people hear.

And I'm like, I'm not calling you lazy. I'm just saying, right or wrong, you benefit from a system that was built by people who look like me, right? Like, you think of slavery, right? Like, that was free labor for 200 and something years.

And you think you're not benefiting from the system? Like, two plus two is four, right? Not, not, you don't have to do all this one point. Like, no, dog, two plus two gives you four. And white people have benefited from a system in America that pushes them above people.

And I think we Okay, so I don't wanna play, there's a part he gets to where he basically states, he comes out and he says that it's not personal. It's not like I'm, he says, I'm not, it's a white person.

I'm not trying to condemn you. You're just part of this bigger group, right? And that's, this whole argument he's making here, that's what it is. This white privilege conception is that. You're just part of this group.

And even, he even said from what you just heard, you might be trying to help. And that's a hard thing to hear because you don't agree with that and you wanna help that, but you're part of the problem, essentially.

You're having all this benefit, this privilege allocated to you. And that gives you a benefit that others don't have. So for lack of a better term, he kind of puts everyone in a box, right? And regardless of circumstance, if you're white, you have this, right?

So I think that's interesting to me. So he's viewing, throughout this podcast, you see he views white people as a block. He says, yes, they're individual white people, but you gotta understand that you have this thing attached to you, right?

You're as a block. Now, I want you to remember that because it's gonna be important later on for something else I'm gonna play from Chris Merrick. I wanna skip ahead here to, we're gonna skip actually, let's see, how far do we wanna skip ahead?

Let's go to 33 here. We're gonna come back to the white privilege stuff too. But let's skip ahead quite a bit and just hear a little bit about Black Lives Matter, whether or not Chris Merrick is in favor of that.

There was projects together, and they were able to have real hard conversations because these people came from different walks of life and they appreciated each other. And that wasn't my college experience, right?

It was oftentimes me saying like, hey, have you thought about the minority in this room, right? Like, have you thought about those things? And those guys at that point were like, yo, we gotta think through these things, right?

And it was the black kid telling his black friends like, yo, we ain't gonna be playing all hip hop music, right? Like, we gonna throw some country in there because you know Mason loves Garth Brooks. Why'd he say that for you?

I don't know, but I'm gonna let you be great, y 'all. But like, even those little small things where you see people like thinking about somebody else other than themselves and me not necessarily having to teach them, yo, like you should care about other people, right?

Like, why should I tell you that other people matter, right? And so like, and I think for me, like having that experience and not saying that you don't have it, I don't want y 'all hearing me like going all the way in that drug city, right?

I will not be here if I did not believe in the mission at Grove City or I didn't value the work that you students put in or the staff and faculty put in. But like, it is, there has been this difference versus me being there and here where like, like if I always say black lives matter there, like day one trip, you say it here and they call you a socialist.

And I'm like, that makes me a socialist because I'm telling you that like, or it's limo, that's, no, it's a limo, right? So when I say, like, if I say healthcare for all, all you freaking citizens,.

No, I'm gonna go kick my bad dog.

You know, and they don't mean it as a compliment, right? It's a freaking, it's a dick, you know what I'm saying? But like, Lord knows, I say, somebody says something about you and your guns, you're gonna flip out, right?

And it's like, I don't care about your guns, y 'all keep your, keep your, yo, your 12 gauge, walk on your dog. I don't care if you want to kill deer, go ahead and beat my dog. I ain't gonna argue with you, doc.

But, but like being there and seeing those students, and I think because they have a true relationship with each other and they value different people, that's what helped them engage with each other, right?