The Pregnant TreeSome readers may have scratched their heads when they read the snippet in the latest Weather Report, “Quarterback expelled over connections with the pregnant tree.”  I am kind of surprised there hasn’t been more of a campus or blog reaction to the story that prompted this, especially since the press has picked up on it, from the local to the international level.  This happened just a couple of weeks ago, but the story is still interesting, and it is worth discussing.

The pregnant tree is the easy part to explain.  It is a tree with some sort of diseased lump, and is a well-known campus artifact.

The other part of the snippet actually happened, and deserves more explanation.  Harding expelled its star quarterback, David Knighton, because he allowed a woman to stay at his house off-campus.  This was a violation of a Harding policy, which states that “staying overnight in a motel, hotel or any such arrangement with a member of the opposite gender will result in suspension, although explicit sexual immorality may not have been observed.”  Intelligent people, though, do not have to end all discussion after arriving at the conclusion that an action violated a written policy.

According to Knighton, a female friend needed a place to stay because she lost track of time and was going to miss the 1:00am curfew on campus.  He didn’t want anything to happen to her – punishment from the school, or danger from sleeping in her car – so he told her he would leave the door unlocked.  She spent the night on his couch. Knighton’s father commented on the situation: “He was doing his Christian duty. If my daughter was stranded like that, I know I’d hope somebody would come to her rescue.  What’s so bad about it is David has done nothing wrong. But the dean told me it didn’t matter, that it wouldn’t make any difference [even if David Knighton’s version of events are accurate]. Doesn’t that sound silly?”

It does, in fact.  What is the purpose of such a policy?  At best, it is an annoying and misguided paternalistic intrusion into students’ personal lives.  I have written before for this blog and for the Bison about how this kind of paternalism is crippling to the individual’s moral compass.  At worst, it chases away good students, decent people, and star athletes, ruins reputations and careers, tarnishes the school’s reputation, and makes it a laughingstock.

It is fine if individuals choose to impose quaint and artificial restrictions on themselves because they want to avoid anything resembling a sexual encounter.  That should be their choice.  But this university policy, along with several other paternalistic policies at Harding do more harm than good.  This story has been published in the Searcy Daily Citizen, The Arkansas Leader, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, The International Herald Tribune, and others.  The attention it attracts is not good.  Almost anyone who reads these stories will see Harding as an absurdly Puritan and backwards institution that is more obsessed with following its own arbitrary rules than with the lives of real people or with the truth.  Dean Varner’s comment that it wouldn’t matter establishes that pretty firmly.  It is a shame that the school continues to squander its potential and deviate from its principles because it is dragged down by paternalism and legalism.

UPDATE:  It turns out, John Wright did blog about this.