Pepperdine board member resigns after school denied anti-homophobia club

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A member of Pepperdine’s American Humanics Scholars Board resigned this month because the university would not recognize the club, Students Against Homophobia.

By Susan Reines/Special to The Malibu Times

A board member who helped oversee a program at Pepperdine University resigned from his post this month because the school would not recognize a student’s anti-homophobia club.

The university administration maintains that it preaches tolerance, but will not counter its biblical teachings by recognizing a club it says seeks to condone homosexuality.

Andrew Weisser, who oversaw a Pepperdine program that prepares students for careers with nonprofit organizations as a member of the university’s American Humanics Scholars Community Partners Board of Directors, said he decided to turn down the university’s invitation to return for a second year because the school would not recognize Students Against Homophobia as a campus club.

“For me, personally and professionally, I felt that continuing in my capacity as a board member would condone an environment that makes it acceptable to discriminate,” Weisser, the vice president of Communications for the American Lung Association of California, said in an interview last week.

“I was aware that Pepperdine had made this decision a few months ago, and when I received a letter inviting me back to the board, I explored a little further to see if anything had changed, and it hadn’t,” he said.

Mark Davis, Pepperdine dean of student affairs, decided February that the university would not accept a student’s application to begin an anti-homophobia club, barring Students Against Homophobia from meeting or advertising on campus.

“We stand with the proposed Students Against Homophobia against irrational fear of homosexuals, against the hateful treatment of homosexuals,” Davis said, noting that he had written articles and overseen seminars denouncing acts of violence and hatred against homosexuals.

However, Davis said the school’s biblical foundations prohibited it from accepting the proposed club.

“Some people’s definition of homosexuality includes accepting lifestyle. That’s where the university differs,” he said. “From meeting with the founder it was clear that the goal was to change the university’s fundamental position about homosexuality, and that was what we disagreed about.”

Grant Turck, the Pepperdine junior who applied to begin the club last year, said Weisser called him to ask about his feelings about Pepperdine before resigning Nov. 2.

“Generally his question was, ‘Will the environment at Pepperdine change?'” Turck said. “And I said, my feeling was, it’s pretty much remaining exclusive and it’s not moving toward acceptance. And so with that, he said thank you, and it was about a week or so after that he decided to resign.”

Weisser told the professor who oversees the American Humanics program of his resignation, then sent an e-mail to more than 20 university officials and student leaders, including the president and chancellor of the university.

He received only two responses. One was from another board member, whom Weisser declined to name, and the other was from David Baird, Dean of Seaver College, the segment of Pepperdine that includes the American Humanics Program.

“I was very sorry Andrew didn’t talk to me before making his decision,” Baird said. “The fact of the matter is, we do not discriminate. All people are welcome here. We do maintain traditions of Judeo-Christian values, and we are committed to those values, just as Mr. Weisser holds to his values.”

Baird said Turck’s proposed club was not a widespread movement but “really his own single effort to establish a group that supports the countenance of gay lifestyle.”

Turck said the fact that Weisser’s resignation drew a response from Baird meant that the proposed club and the resignation did have an effect on the university.

“Dean Baird did write a letter,” Turck noted, “so I think to some extent, it has already caused a reaction, because the fact of the matter is if it caused no reaction, a high-ranking university official would not have written back.”

Turck has taken his group off campus, where he says he has a list of about 30 students supporting his new nonprofit organization. Its goal, he said, is to launch an advertising campaign on campus and around Malibu to publicize the issue of homophobia.

“I have a dual hope,” he said. “One, that they [Pepperdine] would accept the club. But before accepting the club, if they would adopt a nondiscrimination policy, that’s all that I and other students are really asking for on campus.”

The administration says it already has an antidiscrimination policy, pointing to a section of the student handbook that reads, “Pepperdine University does not unlawfully discriminate” on the basis of sexual orientation.