A reader took me to task for my entry earlier this week noting Republican Senate candidate Cam Cavasso’s ties to Pacific Christian University.
Submitted on 2010/06/08 at 6:14pm
So, he has a connection with Pacific Christian… What’s the big deal about that?? In this article you single out three specific courses which are taught at the University in an attempt to paint Cavasso as a Christian weirdo. Yet ALL Universities have courses which different groups of people will find weird, extreme, or flat out ridiculous. As a former student of Brown University, an Ivy League institution, I can fully attest that we had courses which dealt with the supernatural – from Christian and non-Christian perspectives, as well as other courses which were totally outlandish. Harvard, Yale, Stanford… same thing. Would you discredit Cavasso as a radical Christian if he had connections to Brown just because of some of the courses they offer?
Perhaps I was too flippant, but Pacific Christian is not Brown University. By a long shot.
Although Pacific Christian claims to be “accredited by the esteemed Transworld Accrediting Commission,” it does not appear to meet the standard for legal accreditation under state law, which sets requirements for degree-granting colleges and universities in order to control so-called “degree mills”.
The Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs has a detailed summary of its regulations of post-secondary degree granting institutions. According to DCCA, an accredited institution must be meet certain standards.
In the State of Hawaii, degree granting institutions fall into one of two categories: accredited or unaccredited. State law specifically defines unaccredited institutions as “degree granting institutions that are not accredited or a candidate for accreditation by at least one nationally recognized accrediting agency that is listed by the United States Secretary of Education.” It is important to understand that not all so-called accrediting agencies enjoy such recognition. Further information concerning accreditation in the United States, including a list of the nationally recognized accrediting agencies can be found online at the United States Department of Education website.
The Transworld Accrediting Commission is not one of these “nationally recognized accrediting agencies.”
This seems to mean that Pacific Christian University is operating in a grey area. It appears to operate under an exemption to state law (Section 446E-1.6(9)), which exempts “Schools and educational programs conducted by religious organizations solely for the religious instruction of their members.”
However, since PCU says it is open to students from outside the ranks of its sponsoring organization, there would appear to be questions about whether it really can claim to fall under the quoted exemption.
More information on unaccredited colleges and universities is available from DCCA.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Puting aside religious v. secular schools, and even putting aside Cam Cavasso’s past history, the Brown analogy probably fails for another reason. While some offbeat class(es) can be found at ANY institution, I’m willing to bet that the ones at Brown referred to above are a tiny fraction of their total offerings. Something tells me, however, that they are the rule , not the exception, at Pacific Christian.
Moral: Before rushing to pick a fight, it’s best to know who your messing with. : )
Thank you for responding to my post. While I respect that you were willing to address my calling you out on what I termed “dishonest” and “helplessly biased” reporting, you missed my point tremendously. The point I was making in my post had absolutely nothing to do with the status of PCU regarding its accrediting status, or even the quality of the institution for that matter. In context, your last post was not a slam on PCU nearly as much as it was an attempt to paint candidate Cavasso as a nut-job because he was related to the institution. I pointed out that you merely listed three strange sounding courses, seemingly in an attempt to paint the entire PCU curriculum as radical and weird. Of course, as I said in my post, a quick look at the actual courses offered by PCU reveals that most of them center around leadership, and I challenged you to say what course candidate Cavasso taught rather than list three fringe-ish courses and say “see! He’s crazy!” which your article was trying to do. I mentioned that for all we know he teaches “Character of a Leader”, which is a course offered by the school and more in line with most of their curriculum. So, quite frankly sir, this post dodges the entire point of my original post. The accredited or non-accredited status of PCU doesn’t change what I was saying. It’s status does not change the fact that their curriculum was being misrepresented in a way which was designed to put candidate Cavasso in a poor light. That’s the main point of my orignial post, and you totally, completely, and utterly failed to respond to that, sir.
@ohinaforest: actually, I’d say that about 1/4+ of the course offering at Brown is rather outlandish. No matter what your worldview (Christian, Muslim, secular, other, etc), a vast number of courses at Brown are going to strike you as fringe, strange, radical, and absurd. In terms of number of courses total to number of strange courses, the ratio is practically identical. And I’m sure many Christians would not find the three courses listed in the first article to be strange at all… and it is, after all, a Christian school (accredited or not).
@Mr. Loomis: Were you referring to me or the writer? Because the way he dodged the content of my original post would indicate he couldn’t answer me… I never rush into a fight (as evidenced by the fact that I researched the curriculum of the school before I said anything… I wanted to know what type of place it really is, and I found it to be sadly misrepresented in the first article). Maybe you should take the time to read all of what I had to say… it’s a lot more than the excerpt reprinted here – but the bit you see here still shows that he misrepresented my argument.
http://ilind.net/2010/06/06/cam-cavasso-apparently-making-another-run-against-dan-inouye/
But I do want to say again I appreciate your noting my post and taking the time to write something in response… even if it wasn’t actually responding.
OK, now no lonhger putting aside religious v. secular schools or Cam Cavasso’s prior history: “legitimate” religious schools are able to obtain and maintain accreditation so the fact that this one has not or cannot is relevant and does say something about Cavasso; Cavasso’s prior history, which among other things makes Duke Aiona’s idea that Hawaii should be made into a Christian state appear normal, suggests that Cavasso is, indeed, a “crazy,” “Christian weirdo.”
I went to the school’s website to check out its curriculum and, yeah, it is nutty. This is not a polite thing to say–people get exceesively tolerant of foolishness when it is packaged as “religion.” But the school strikes me as a cult training center, not as a legitimate “university.” Yes, the curriculum focuses on “leadership” training, but the descriptions make it clear, this is authoritarian in outlook. Mini-fuehrers for Christ.
Its accreditation of the school is NOT irrelevant to how “crazy” it might be. I want to call attention again to the passage Ian quoted from their website:
“Pacific Christian University’s degree program is accredited by the esteemed Transworld Accrediting Commission. ”
“Esteemed”? That’s a weaselly word. Esteemed by whom? Not by government agencies, but by adherents to this particular, narrow thread of Christian Fundamentalism. The phrasing is designed to be misleading to prospective students.
Is it fair to criticize Cam for his association with a dingbat, pseudo-college? I think it is a signal to those who remember Cam from his earlier career. It’s the same ol’ Cam.
Still crazy after all these years.