The following letter was sent to Heather Knight by a former student of PUC. We thought it was very good and obtained permission to publish it.
Dear Dr. Knight,
I just read an article in Fulcrum 7 that said you are in the process of firing Aubyn Fulton. I wanted to thank you for addressing this problem situation and encourage you to stay strong. I am praying for you to have wisdom and discretion and to take courageous actions as necessary in this situation. I can imagine you must be under tremendous pressure. You are in my prayers. I would pray and wish that PUC could become the institution God would have it be and that faculty would feel their responsibilities before God to lead and guide students in the paths of true wisdom and righteousness.
I graduated from PUC in 1994 with a degree in Psychology. I went on to get a Masters in Social Work from Smith College in Massachusetts and I work as a social worker today. Bruce Bainum was my advisor, but I took many classes from Dr. Fulton. I remember being in his class when he boldly told students that one should have sex with his or her partner before getting married. Then, he later qualified it by explaining that sexual behavior is on a continuum and hand holding and kissing are classified as sex. There was never any caution to be pure or to be careful about where one draws the line on this sexual behavior continuum.
Hopefully others didn’t have this experience, but I felt as though I was being encouraged to feel very sophisticated if I was questioning all of the Biblical directives about sexual behavior. In the history department I was taught that human history goes back at least 13,000 years. This made me question the Genesis account of things with its creation account and genealogies.
In Bible class we studied Eugene Peterson’s commentary on the book of Revelation, “Reverse Thunder”. It was NOT a traditional Adventist interpretation of that Book, to say the least.
I left the church and my faith after leaving PUC. By God’s grace and my mother’s prayers I returned to my faith after having learned many things the hard way and suffering many consequences from my misadventures in the world. To be fair, I was a pretty mushy-headed young idiot back then so I can’t blame my loss of faith completely on Dr. Fulton or PUC.
But wouldn’t it have been nice if I had been nudged in the right direction there. I now have a son and had no intention of sending him to PUC. Now that I’m hearing about your courage I have some hope that it may one day be a suitable place for Christian young people to learn a Biblical worldview and wisdom. May God bless you and guide you.
You are free to quote me or show this email to anyone who would care. My name back then was Heather Eichman and as I said, I graduated with a BS in Psychology in 1994.
God bless you and hold you up,
Heather Gasser