By Yaakov Weinstein
About eight months ago there was a post on Beyond BT about life at a secular university (non-YU, Touro). At that time Steve Brizel (someone I have never met personally but have been fortunate enough to become acquainted with via the web), suggested that I also write a post on the subject. While I was unable to do so at that time, I am happy to now have the opportunity to fulfill his request.
For this post I assume that much of my audience is familiar with the challenges facing students on secular campuses. Thus, I will include only a few short paragraphs on these challenges and then suggest some strategies for meeting these challenges. I will not include possible merits of attending secular universities. Some of these were addressed in the previous post on this subject. In addition, I can safely assume that a number of readers became ba’alei t’shuva at secular campuses at least partly with the help of other students. Finally, those interested in my personal experiences may enjoy a column I wrote in the YU Commentator concerning the community I was fortunate to be a part of at MIT. This column was in response to a previous piece by a YU student who spent some time at MIT.
The original piece is here:
http://yuweb.addr.com/v67i1/editorials/MITvsYU.htm
My response is here:
http://yuweb.addr.com/v67i2/columns/mit.html
I would like to divide the challenges facing students on secular campuses into three parts: sensual, intellectual and ideological. Each of these deserves a study in and of itself but for now I’ll just provide just a few highlights.
Some readers may remember the university atmosphere of the 1960s: rebellion against authority, free love, drugs and the like. College campuses no longer resemble what they were in the 1960s – they’re worse. All that the rebellious students of the 1960s fought for have become de rigueur on campus. There is a laundry list of statistics on alcohol consumption, sexual activity and drugs on campuses which are easily found on the web (for fun try a google search of – hookah in the sukkah – and note some ‘Orthodox’ sponsorship of smoking). Intellectual challenges can be found in many places on campus. Obviously, courses in Judaic studies, religion, and history will assume multiple, human, authorship of the Torah. But teachings genuinely antithetical to Torah may also be found in courses of psychology and biology. The issues raised in these courses go way beyond the ‘historical’ question of whether evolution occurred. The real challenges are the assumed denial of a supernatural being and the obvious equivalence of man with animal. Ideological challenges on campus can range from hatred of the state of Israel and anti-semitism to deconstructivism (and its accompanied rejection of anything not written by a professor) and the relativty of the terms ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ These are not to be confused with intellectual challenges which attack with certain assumed or understood facts. Ideological challenges attack a student’s attitude towards authority, religion and morality.
Of course, real life challenges cannot be nicely fit into one of these boxes. Generally, a given challenge will include elements of each of the above categories. I like calling this the “b’nos Moav syndrome.” As we are told the Jews only worshipped the idols of Moav as a means of attaining the Moavite women (Rashi Bamidbar 25:2, Sanhedrin 106a). Put into a modern situation, if it allows you to flirt with your gorgeous non-Jewish classmate, it is much easier to believe the human authorship of the Torah. Additionally, challenges on college campuses come at a very impressionable age and at a time when students may be living only with others of this age (i.e. tremendous peer pressure and limited people with life experience with which to talk). The gmara in Kiddushin 30a (according to the second opinion in Rashi) suggests the proper time to chastise and thus teach a child is from 16-22 or 18-24. Increasingly, ‘children’ in this age range find themselves away from home in what may be a religiously hostile environment.
What are some strategies that can be used to face challenges on a secular campus? The strategies I list below are a conglomeration of my own thoughts and experiences and results of conversations I have had with many, many people on this subject. I’ll divide strategies into three parts:
1) strategies for a rebbi, teacher or shul rabbi,
2) strategies for parents with kids on campus
3) strategies for students on campus.
But before getting to this list there is one ‘strategy’ that is most important – Know yourself/ your child / your student – some students perform best in a structured setting. Some do best when they do not have to be a leader. Others do best when faced with adversity. They step up when the going gets rough, but may not even bother if things are catered to them. There is NO way personal advice can be given or a proper decision can be made without this knowledge (if I can add a personal interpretation to a well-known discussion: Chazal discuss the spiritual stature of Noach. Some say that he was a great man and had he lived at the time of Avraham – where there were others worshipping the true Deity – he would have been even greater. Some say he was great for his generation but would not have been much had he lived at the time of Avraham – see Rashi Breishis 6:9. I suggest that this discussion actually relates to the personality of Noach rather then his spiritual stature. The latter opinion believes that Noach was the type of individual who needed the challenge. The natural rebel against what is popular. Thus, he excelled specifically in a generation of evil).
To Be Continued
Thirdly, campus Jewish groups are atrocious and this is something the Jewish community can help fix. Hillel is regarded as cliquey and hellbent on being antagonistic to the Orthodox. You then get a situation where the religious people along with a majority of secular kids avoid it like the plague.
Mordechai – Generalizations are dangerous. It depends which Hillel.
I know of several where the Hillel Rabbi is Orthodox, and there is a thriving daily minyan, as well a shiurim, kosher meals, etc.
I also know of at least one Hillel that came to campus at the request of about 5 students, as the rest of us found the combination of a thriving student-run Jewish organization, campus-offered kosher dining hall (since the ’70’s) and Chabad quite sufficient. Hillel there – 15 years later – still primarily caters to the non-Orthodox and social event end of things, because the thriving Orthdox population has made the pre-existing Chabad there “the place to be frum”. Hillel knew better than to compete, so they took what was left, so to speak. Hillel, Chabad, and sometimes the Judaic Studies Dept and “Jewish fraternities” co-sponsor a few yearly big events.
When I started to become observant (in my 30’s) a Christian friend said to me “sure, you become religious now, after you are married and starting a family, You already had your fun in college and in your 20’s, what kind of challenge is that?” And I do think back to the crazy stuff I did then, and I struggle with the fact that I don’t have that much regret. (If I could do it over what would I do?…hmmm)OTOH since I did get to see all the nonsense, I have more of an appreciation of the life I choose. And maybe because I don’t have that strong feeling of regret, it is important to make sure my kids have a different experience as my views may have already been somewhat warped. Just my 2 cents.
“Secondly, given what goes on in high schools (yeshivish or modern) today, I’m going to go out on a limb and say most kids have heard stories about sex and drinking/drugs way before hitting college age.”
Stories are very different from having it shoved up your nose.
I went to public school. I’m pretty sure some of my friends were sleeping together… but no one admitted to it directly. A big joke among us math nerds was that most of us scored very high on the “Purity Test.” (You started at a hundred and lost points for having done any of the not-so-pure things on the test. Most of us were high 90s.) A teacher told me that you could buy drugs in the school during the 4 minutes between classes if you wanted to, and some of the other kids seemed to agree… but I never ever saw any of it. As for drinking, well, I heard more first-person accounts, but wasn’t personally involved in any of that myself. Yes, I was a nerd, but even so.
Then I went to college. At an IVY. Classes weren’t so bad, although I never should have signed up for that Psychology of Gender class. (Very interesting, just not very tzniusdik.) But the Fraternities and Sororities were all around us. Drinking started Thursday night and continued all weekend. Walking home from dinner one Friday night I actually passed some Frat boys carrying their clothes. I lived on an all-women floor, but the girl across the hall had a single room… her boyfriend usually slept over, and they would leave condoms lying around (or on our doorknob, yuck) to tease us. I went to two frat parties, because everyone else was going, really. One was a bunch of people sitting around a keg of beer. Boring, so I left. One was loud music, dancing, and lots of drinking. So I stopped going, because that’s not my idea of a party. But I went with other Jews, who probably went back.
I don’t know if it was because of, in spite of, or had nothing to do with being surrounded by such an environment, but I fell in with the Orthodox kids (I wasn’t Orthodox then, am now), perhaps looking for some Kedushah in the midst of all that craziness.
Many of the former Day School students, in contrast, went to check out that life, and some actually joined some of those fraternities and sororities. The “traditional/Conservative” friends from High School who came in with me, who came from Kosher homes… well, I rarely saw them at Shabbat Services or at Kosher Dining, and the regular dining halls there were the type to sneak lard into the crust of their vegetarian options. (Yes, they really did that, and admitted when asked.)
I don’t regret for a minute that I went there… after all, I became frum, met my husband, made some life-long friends and did a lot of (personal and spiritual) growing. But when my kids are old enough for college, we will be heavily pushing YU/Stern if not Yeshiva Gedolah/Seminary, let me tell you! You have to be a very strong personality to survive with your Yiddishkeit intact under those conditions.
I agree with Yaakov (#8). Dealing with religion on campus is definitely not just a Jewish problem. On my campus, there were some Muslim men, although I don’t think any of them were very religious. The three religious Muslim women (out of thousands of students) were very much not a part of campus life. I only saw them once, even though they were friends of friends.
IMO it has to do with romantic relationships. Muslim men don’t worry as much because they aren’t prohibited from being with non-Muslim women. Muslim women, on the other hand, have many more restrictions. Christians are OK because pretty much anyone they meet is at least somewhat Christian, whereas Jews have to actually work at dating only Jews.
As a frum college student at a secular university I find this article/series of articles interesting to say the least.
Firstly, as someone at a top 5 university with wildly liberal professors, I think it bears saying that most students don’t pay much if any attention to their professor’s often convoluted ramblings. People go to class to get an A and then to move on and get a good job/go to a good grad school. Students today don’t go to college in order to find a philosophy on life in my experience. Thus I really don’t think the professors’ ‘hashkafot’ matter since as I said most don’t pay much attention to these people anyway.
Secondly, given what goes on in high schools (yeshivish or modern) today, I’m going to go out on a limb and say most kids have heard stories about sex and drinking/drugs way before hitting college age.
Thirdly, campus Jewish groups are atrocious and this is something the Jewish community can help fix. Hillel is regarded as cliquey and hellbent on being antagonistic to the Orthodox. You then get a situation where the religious people along with a majority of secular kids avoid it like the plague.
However the real problem, and this is CRUCIAL, are Orthodox campus groups. Where I go to school, the existing Orthodox group went on a rampage when a new Orthodox rabbi came to campus in order to learn with students. Things got out of control to the point where students involved with the new rabbi were thrown out of the existing group and were subject to lashon hara and other personal attacks (along with the new rav). This kind of stuff drives kids away from the Jewish community and while these types of power struggles are appropriate for members of the Soviet Politburo, they are a chillul Hashem when engaged in by people purporting to be rabbanim.
One of the strategies should be to stop this type of insanity from happening on campuses in order to keep from loosing traditional/religious kids for good.
Unfortuantely, I don’t really have internet access from home (you know those BeyondBT posts :) so it’s easier for me to answer e-mails (yaakovweinstein@juno.com – feel free to email) than comment (now is my lunch break) but I wanted to chime in on Aaron’s question.
First, I believe this problem is experienced by other religions – try searching religion on campus is google and you’ll see…
Second, I think most groups are more organized and prepared for this than Orthodox Jews are. Every Christian denomination has their own religous group on campus. Jews as a whole have one religous/cultural group – Hillel (this is not meant to be a put down of Hillel which has done some wonderful things but read their mission statement – the idea is to get Jews doing ‘Jewish’ with other Jews). Where is the Orthodox Jewish response (this issue will come up in future installments)?
Moshe, I’ll forgive you for implying that I went to Harvard (I actually went to MIT), but please don’t make that mistake again :)
Aaron asked
Why is it that every fundamentalist religious group like the evangelicals and the radical Muslims have no problem with their sons or daughters going to secular campuses, but the Orthodox Jewish community still can’t get over it?
Rabbi Horowitz (in a different context) pointed out a major difference between halachik Jews and fine, upstanding non-Jews is the concept of gedarim, safeguards. We have gedarim such as prohibitions of yichud, negiah, and the like that are not found in other religions. It stands to reason that steering clear of the permissive secular college campus would follow this paradigm.
Aaron asked
Why is it that every fundamentalist religious group like the evangelicals and the radical Muslims have no problem with their sons or daughters going to secular campuses, but the Orthodox Jewish community still can’t get over it?
It’s a good question, and comparing the religions in practice would be very interesting.
But at the end of the day, it’s probably not relevant what other religions do, but rather what we should do.
The main problem is the environment on campus is permissive and the students don’t have their family environment to give them fortitude on a daily basis. For some this is not a problem and for others this has led to well documented problems. Obviously each child and situation is different and Yaakov is providing us with some pointers based on his actual experience and observations of the struggles.
While I still believe that optimally, students seeking a college education should look to YU, SCW and Touro, or alternatively a college where they need not dorm such as Queens or Towson, IMO, the author has set forth an excellent guide for educators, parents and students to consider and consult during this difficult process. The bottom line IMO comes down to whether one is obligated to or should even place onself in a place of possible moral danger even if one is confident in their own religious level. IMo, this guide adds a lot to this discussion.
To add to the above,
The link below contains an article from 1969 describing the decision of the MIT Corporation to put control over parietal rules (limits on women’s visiting hours in men’s dorms) into the hands of the dorm residents. The dorms, after being so empowered, moved quickly to formally abolish the rules. But the de facto abolition happened long before that.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/archives/VOL_089/TECH_V089_S0096_P002.pdf
Bob, You say that “To live on a typical campus these days is a significant stumbling block for Jewish students.” While this may be true for many, isn’t this also true of the general society in which we all live? Eventually people need to function in the “real world”. This means working with people of the opposite sex, understanding different cultures etc…
Why is it that every fundamentalist religious group like the evangelicals and the radical Muslims have no problem with their sons or daughters going to secular campuses, but the Orthodox Jewish community still can’t get over it?
Yaakov Weinstein said,
“All that the rebellious students of the 1960s fought for have become de rigueur on campus.”
At least on my campus (MIT, 1966-1972), these things were already approaching de rigueur then, although there were still quite a few students and faculty who didn’t buy into it. Since then, the main change I see from afar is that the adminstration is way more PC than it used to be.
Even so, in the mid-60’s, Dean Wadleigh (the Dean of Student Affairs) regularly gave his famous “nuts and bolts” speeches to entering freshmen. The gist was that we could do anything at all discreetly as long as we didn’t create embarrassing headlines for MIT.
In our dorm, Bexley Hall (and the others , too, as far as I know), all restrictions on who could stay overnight were lifted during this period. About the only thing that didn’t happen then was the creation of formally co-ed dorms.
Back to the present—
To live on a typical campus these days is a significant stumbling block for Jewish students. In many cases, undergraduates are made to live on campus unless they are commuting from home. In a celebrated case not long ago, Yale forced objecting Jewish undergrads to live in co-ed dorms there.
I haven’t even touched on the negative influence of left-liberal or worse professors who are not above gross slanting of their subject matter and grading based on politics.
There are some Orthodox organizations that are doing very good things for Jewish students at universities. These are a lifeline for those who have access to them.
See, for example:
http://www.machonltorah.org/PRview.asp?section=423&key=25
http://www.machonltorah.org/PRview.asp?section=423&key=23
There was an article written several years ago by two Harvard grad students about this very topic. Their conclusion was the same: secular universities are very dangerous for modern Orthodox kids. The RCA website used to have the article posted, but it has since been taken down — you can’t find it anywhere on the net. Maybe someone could do a public service and post it up again.