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[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Dear respected leaders,

Thank you for your commitment to this college and longing to serve Christ faithfully by ministering to the Westmont community.  Students like myself would be in quite a mess without the hours of time you devote to improving our education.

One of the many things I have been grateful for in the leadership at Westmont College is your willingness and desire to thoroughly address the issues that arise within the fabric of the community.  It is a mark of authenticity that Westmont doesn’t only address global issues, but also those that are immediately present on our campus.  It is for these reasons, that Westmont, among other liberal arts schools, is known as a market place of ideas.

Having said that, I want to address an issue that I believe has continually and intentionally been ignored.  If and when the college has addressed it, it has been done very poorly, in such a way that insults the issue and those passionately opposing it.  I am speaking of abortion.

After my display of abortion imagery outside the dining commons last semester, it was emphatically clear that the leadership at Westmont College was strongly opposed to my tactics.  My two-hour conversation with Stu Cleek and Tim Wilson confirmed that.  I am not writing this letter to say that the leadership is wrong for opposing my tactics, but rather to call attention to their failure to address the issue of the use of graphic imagery in the pro-life movement, particularly at Westmont.

I would like to draw your attention to an occurrence a couple years ago.  Westmont received a letter from the LGBT alumni community, regarding their disappointment with how Westmont had handled the issue of homosexuality in the past.  In response, the college planned a whole focus week in the spring of 2011 to focus on LGBT issues through the lens of scripture.  This week involved chapel speakers, lectures, prayer, and discussions.  In other words, Westmont had an expansive and quick response to this community crisis.

In relation to the issue of abortion and the use of graphic imagery, it was obvious that many students and faculty were disturbed by my display, and discussion regarding my tactics exploded.  Westmont’s only response to this particular crisis was to have a forum where people could come and share their thoughts.  At the end of this forum, no consensus was established, yet ambiguity was intensified.  The diction and rhetoric of the night scarily resembled relativism.

In light of the debate over the use of graphic imagery in the pro-life movement and at Westmont College, I proposed a debate, where a pro-life activist who affirmed the use of graphic imagery would debate someone from the Westmont community who disagreed with my tactics.  I emailed three individuals on the leadership team who I knew disagreed with me, inviting them to participate in this debate and all three rejected.  I then made sure that an all-faculty email was sent out, inviting anyone who disagreed with the use of graphic imagery in the pro-life movement to debate a pro-life activist.  The only response I received was from a man who wouldn’t be willing to debate until the next school year.  In the same way that Westmont recognized the importance of quickly addressing the issue of homosexuality in the spring of 2011, given the current nature of the debate, I knew that this debate had to happen soon, while the discussion was still ripe.

I believe it is a sad thing that I had to even initiate a debate, which would pierce to the heart of the matter (the use of graphic imagery) after my display.  Why didn’t Westmont respond to the community crisis over graphic imagery last semester in the same way and to the same extent that they did in the spring of 2011?  Why did Westmont deem the important issue of homosexuality as worthy of their time, when it is taking very few lives a year, yet almost completely ignore the issue of abortion, which is taking 1.2 million babies’ lives a year in the United States?  Why, after I proposed a debate that would allow the community to talk about and hear both sides of the very thing they disagreed about (graphic imagery) didn’t the leadership make an effort to select an individual to debate a pro-life activist?

I am deeply troubled by Westmont’s apparent selectivity in the issues they address for the community.  What does a Christian college look like to the world when it refuses to take controversial issues like abortion head on?  How will Westmont’s moral neutrality on the issue of abortion (evidenced by their refusal to take a pro-life stance) affect their witness for Christ?  I am referring to my proposal for Westmont to take a stance against the injustice of abortion and their response that they won’t.  Will such detrimental moral neutrality seep into any other issues at Westmont?

I cannot seem to reconcile this portion of our community life statement with the current predicament I have just laid out:

Learning depends on truth-centered attitudes. It thrives in an atmosphere of discriminating openness to ideas, a condition that is characterized by a measure of modesty toward one’s own views, the desire to affirm the true, and the courage to examine the unfamiliar. As convictions are expressed, one enters into the “great conversation” of collegiate life, a task best approached with a willingness to confront and be confronted with sound thinking.

This portion of our community life statement appears to be in direct contradiction to the actions of the leadership at Westmont as of late.  As a brother in the Lord Jesus, I implore you, in fact I beg of you to take action on behalf of the unborn children.  The sewers of Santa Barbara are running red with the blood of our children, and the Christian community up on the hill is doing nothing.  Westmont is potentially the largest gathering of Christians in all of Santa Barbara, and yet, we are ignoring the weightier issues of the law (Matthew 23:23).

I am grateful that the Lord has laid this issue on my heart, but I grow weary and wait with anticipation for the day that the leadership at Westmont will take the lead and rise up to the occasion; to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves” (Proverbs 31:8).  Whether you approved or disapproved of my display last semester, we can no longer say that we do not know what is happening to the precious unborn human persons.  God is watching and waiting for His people to protect His children; a nation yet unborn (Psalm 22:31).

“Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter.  If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?  Does not he who guards your life know it?  Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?”  -Proverbs 24:11-12

Seth David Gruber

Right to Life Club President

Class of 2014[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

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