“I feel like people are just hiding under this Christian mask…”

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Transcript for Omission in Admissions

I lost a lot, faith wise. Sophomore year was probably my biggest slip. I started to realize that in order for me to maintain the relationships that I was maintaining that I would have to compromise. I would have to compromise a lot. In the past two years I considered transferring multiple times. Freshman year I considered it while I was actually at school. Sophomore year, this past summer I considered it again. I sort of felt the relationships I was making, they weren’t the people that I really wanted to be shaping me, especially morally. I became very apathetic in my faith, just because it was so difficult already to put up with peer pressure. That the frisbee group had a Bible study that they did with the girls. Which looking back on, they influenced just because, at least there, desire was genuine. Which again was something that I was noticeably lacking at VU. I found a lot of people who were very content. They were content to have a God that was in church waiting for them on Sunday, but they didn’t necessarily need to follow him around the rest of the day, or the rest of the week. Valpo is a do what you like kind of community. The chapel is there if you want to join it. It’s there if you want to partake. The message that you’ll hear there, you can take it, you can leave it. I think everything about VU, for the most part, is a ‘we’re giving you all the options’, but they don’t really stand, I think, for anything. I think they’re, I feel like people are just hiding right now, under this Christian mask or under this Lutheran mask. That it’s sort of a ‘I went to a Christian school, I went to a Lutheran school’ you know what I mean. ‘Check that off the list.’ So, VU’s a university, obviously there’s a huge difference between here is what we put in our pamphlet and here is what we are from a student perspective. But I think even in the pamphlet, as far as I know, just kind of working in the admissions office, faith is a ploy. Faith is a ‘let me figure out where I think you are and and your faith walk, and then I’ll tell you Valpo’s perfect for it.’ I think for the most part, just kind of because I became an AIA which was quite an interesting decision on my part because when I look back on it I worry that I’d have to quit because I was being hypocritical and then through training I’ve just realized there are, it’s not that Valpo is a terrible school. We’re not, you know what I mean. We have a lot of things going for us, not necessarily the things that would speak to me, but I’m sure for plenty of students, you know what I mean. I know because some of them are incandescently happy here. That’s just, it does have things to offer so from an AIA perspective I sort of rectify that by saying, I’m going to be objective. I’m going to tell you what it is. I’m not going to lie. But I may just not tell you to, you know what I mean, that for two years I thought about transferring. I will tell you what it is about Valpo that would make you consider coming here. I think the big things for me are the faith life, which again in my experience so far, we don’t say anything about it.