SOUTH DAKOTA—Public universities across South Dakota implemented a new action plan by the Board of Regents that seeks to broaden campuses’ objectives so that they are not solely consumed by racial and diversity issues—like the Diversity & Inclusion (and Wokeness) department at Andrews University, for instance.
The “Opportunity for All” plan was launched in early August, roughly a week after Governor Kristi Noem signed an executive order banning federal grants tied to critical race theory.
Since the school year's beginning, four employees in diversity efforts at South Dakota State University have left their jobs.
The South Dakota Board of Regents rejected critical race theory by stating in the plan that they “reject, and will not promote, the idea that any individual person is responsible for actions taken by other people.“
You would think that a Bible college like Andrews would have already stumbled on this truth from Ezekiel 18 and 34. Instead, they pitched their tent towards the flashing neon lights of cultural marxism, displaying their loyalty to intersectional wokenesss by establishing their very own Diversity & Inclusion office. In such departments, you are perpetually guilty of the sins of others if you are white, and permanently absolved if you are a sacred minority.
This decision has given rise to tributes on campus to the Black Lives Matter race riots, to the bizarre efforts to support LGBTQ groups on campus, and fetishization of pandemic paraphernalia. What little education is there is tasteless, tribal, and predictably accuses America of systemic racism. This is not to say that there are no good people on campus. There are, and they deserve our support and prayers.
However, this university (Andrews) struggled to re-invent itself the last few years as a new era in Adventist history, a woke reincarnation of the civil rights movement reinterpreting SDA history through the discriminating eye of the microaggression. While claiming to paint a new multicolored Adventism, all they succeed in doing is drawing a portrait of a broken culture that is so obsessed with its momentary causes that it lacks all perspective of the true Advent Movement.
Into this woke cultural climate steps a secular state with more clarity than our own flagship university. Strange times, eh?
South Dakota Board of Regents instructed university leaders to create ‘Opportunity Centers’ on campus, which includes intellectual diversity and equal opportunity. These centers are bereft of the toxic influence of CRT (critical race theory) and endemic wokeness.
They also reject, and will not promote, any suggestion that one group of people is inherently superior or inferior to another group, or is inherently oppressive or immoral. But not everyone is happy about the decision to reject CRT in South Dakota.
At South Dakota State University, a student op-ed argued that,
“Disbanding diversity offices is not going to stop ‘leftist’ thinking in our universities.”
“What they are going to do is make it that much more difficult to promote inclusivity on campus and for non-white, LGBTQIA+ and minority students, faculty and staff to feel accepted here,” the Sept. 28 opinion piece stated.
Summary
There is nothing in this culture that legally limits anybody based on their race. Nothing.
So the woke social justice warrior claims “We are not responsible for who we are, we came into this world a blank slate and you corrupted us. So you are responsible and should be hated.”
It is a very dangerous thing which has no room for God, no room for responsibility, and no forgiveness. There is no room for confessing my sin and coming in repentance to Christ in that mindset.
If you can push off what’s wrong with you on someone else, you’re never going to deal with your own sin and resultingly you can never be saved by Jesus Christ. I hope Andrews figures this out soon. I hope we all do.
If not, secular schools in South Dakota could be a better option for your child. Strange times indeed.
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“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).