This is a story about a Christian Collage in CA that has been ordered by the state to close.
Why?
For that to happen you need to be so egregious, so shockingly bad, and yes they did indeed manage to accomplish that and far far more. First, before we get into this, let’s first talk about something that is oh so inevitable a response.
“We are being Persecuted for our beliefs“
There exists a prevailing persecution narrative within many strands of Christian belief that promotes the idea that the evil world is opposed to the goodness within Christianity, hence wherever Christianity rises up there will be active opposition and attempts to shut it all down.
The light shines in the darkness, and the dark comprehended it not.
Jesus himself is quoted as saying …
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
A modern reading of that is that if you are doing Christianity right, then you will be “persecuted”.
Unfortunately, that verse motivates many devout believers to strive to be as bigoted, intolerant, and obnoxious as possible to ensure that they earn their “persecution” Eagle Scout badge. Alas, many excel at that and so reap their well-earned reward.
The persecution narrative is also a very useful tool that can be deployed to gag and silence any and all wholly valid criticism.
For completeness, I should also point out that the oppression of belief and the killing of “them” because they are heretics and not adherents of the true faith has also been a rather popular human occupation down the centuries. Usually it is a story of a minority belief suffering at the hands of a majority belief.
What it has taught us is a very fundamental principle that, when truly embraced, enables us to leave the bloodshed behind and do far far better …
Believe what you wish and practise that belief in whatever way you wish.
I wish it prevailed without the need to say it, but alas, Freedom of Thought does not mean that anybody gets the right to impose their beliefs on others because (well duh!) others have the right to not have their Freedom of Thought imposed upon.
It works when the state remains neutral.
OK, so back to our tale that involves the Olivet University, a private Christian school in California.
Are they being persecuted for their beliefs, is the state infringing upon their “Freedom of Thought”?
Spoiler: No, something else is going on, so let’s get into the details of that now.
The Earlier Lawsuit
Rumblings that something was very very wrong at Olivet University surfaced earlier in the year when former students filed a lawsuit against the collage. They accused the University of two specific things …
- Slave Labour
- Total Control of Students and that involved not permitting they to leave campus unless accompanied by staff
As reported by the LA Times On Sept 20, 2024 …
In 2018, emergency dispatchers received a strange call from a remote valley in Riverside County. The caller was a 22-year-old student who said that she had been unable to leave her rural college campus for months while she was forced to work without compensation. She said she lived there with 300 others, dispatch records show, and that barbed wire surrounded the school. …
… visitors must make an appointment to enter. …
…students described an environment where they were under near-constant surveillance and stripped of their independence….
…The suit filed in California by four students, including the one who made the emergency call, said they were forced to work at least 40 hours a week doing tasks that included manual labor and gardening, and that their only outing was a weekly shopping trip to a grocery store — chaperoned by school employees. Any other plans to leave the campus required written permission, the suit said.
“At all times while Plaintiffs lived at Olivet’s Anza campus, they were not permitted to come and go from campus unless they first received permission from an Olivet employee,” the suit alleges. “Plaintiffs were required to have a form signed by an Olivet employee authorizing them to leave the campus. Plaintiffs were required to explain where they intend to go, why they were leaving, with whom, and for how long.”…
“Jesus”!
(And I mean that as an appropriate expletive, not in any religious sense).
There is more from that article last Sept, much much more …
…In interviews with The Times, and in a lawsuit filed this year against the university, its founder, former president and others, several former students and employees from Olivet University and its business described a big brother-like atmosphere on multiple campuses where administrators prevented adults from leaving, they said, and forced them to work …
… “They were promised to attend school, basically for free, under the guise of a fully paid scholarship, fully paid tuition, books, etc. And when they arrived there, they were told that they needed to be put to work to pay for school,” Harris said. “They never got paid for those jobs. They were working under duress and if they did not agree to do so, they would have been dismissed by the university. Meanwhile the university set up their visas, set up their arrangements to come there and obviously set up their schooling and living conditions.”…
…Former students Tingbo Cao, 41, and Qilian Zhou, 35, arrived in the U.S. from China in 2011 to join the Olivet University community. For years the couple lived on the San Francisco campus — the school’s former headquarters — before moving to the Mill Valley location when it opened. Although they were promised scholarship money, they said that most of their time was eaten by work that university leaders required them to perform to pay for their education…
…Zhou said that as a graphic design student at Olivet, she often spent more than 50 hours a week creating graphics and selling products such as crystals and T-shirts via online storefronts on Amazon and Etsy. She said she typically purchased the materials from China, but never saw money from the sales …
…Cao did similar work while studying for his degree. During the pandemic, for example, he said he spent 70 hours a week selling masks on Etsy on top of school work. He had only a few hours to sleep. He said his stress was compounded by a growing concern that money he lent to the school in 2019, pulled from funds he received from his parents, wouldn’t be paid back. In 2022, he said that he had a stroke due in part to stress…
…She said that she and her husband were wedded in an arranged marriage. She said the practice was a common way to reinforce a member’s bond to Jang’s “Community” and make it difficult for members to leave, knowing that if they did, they would likely be separated from their loved ones…
Yes, I need to say it again …
“Jesus”!
But how could this “Christian University” ever get away with this?
There are several reasons why this carried on for so long.
First, their students are not US citizens. They mostly draw students from east Asia (See here). They were attracted by the promise of student visas and also a scholarship, but failed to appreciate that they had been conned. In reality they were bought, and not enrolled, hence were treated as free slave labour for their Amazon storefronts.
Secondly, the Oliver Anza campus is very very remote. It sits on a 900 acres of desert scrub two miles from the highway, and 25 miles from the nearest town. The barbed wire that surrounds the campus is not there to keep people out, but rather is there to prevent their property from escaping.
The State Steps in and closes them down
The CA Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE) reviewed what was going on and wrote a very very damming report.
Here are a few extracts …
You can’t just ignore stuff detailed within that report that clearly highlights a “university” that is just not fit for purpose.
This past week the state ordered the school to be shut down …
…Presiding Judge Debra Nye-Perkins, who presided over the Office of Administrative Hearings, ordered the school to halt the enrollment of new students and help current students figure out a plan to finish their degrees elsewhere. The decision was finalized on Dec. 10 and goes into effect on Jan. 10...
… During two unannounced visits to Olivet’s campuses outside of Riverside and San Francisco, Bureau of Private and Post-Secondary Education officers testified that few students and faculty were viewed in living quarters and in classrooms. Most classes that were observed, officers said, were attended by a handful students — sometimes five or seven — and taught via a live-stream….
[So yes, their supposed teachers were not even on campus]
[And when asked to product normal stuff, the facade falls apart]
…Administrative representatives at the university’s main campus in Anza and a branch campus in Mill Valley, Calif., did not have documents readily available related to student and faculty rosters and class syllabi, officers said. Some documents lacked detail, such as how many hours quantified “full-time work” for a student and several faculty contracts were either missing or expired.
Joanna Murray, a senior specialist at the bureau, said that one graduate class she observed was not rigorous enough for that level of education and that there was a lack of engagement between teacher and student.
“It’s not what I expected from a Master class,” she said….
This is an excellent outcome.
However, it all scratches the surface here, there is a lot more bubbling away below the surface.
It’s Sleaze all the way down
Scratch and sniff, then stand back because what you will get is a very distinct foul oder of farmyard slurry.
It all started in 2000. Olivet University was initially established in South Korea pastor David J. Jang. The initial goal was to train clerics for his denomination. However, by 2004 they had expanded the scope and spread to the US.
In 2018 various official within their New York campus were charged with money laundering, fraud, and conspiracy.
In 2020 they were forced to pay $500,000 for improperly removing asbestos from its Dover, NY campus.
Now here at the end of 2024 the remaining CA Campus is also being ordered to close … but they state that they will appeal and claim they have applied for a religious exception to remain open.
Via the Roys Report we also have this …
In 2020, the college and former publishers of Newsweek and The Christian Post, which also has ties to Jang [The Founder], pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $35 million in loans. The loans were supposed to be used to purchase computers but were used for other purposes. The chair of the board of Olivet pled guilty and served no jail time but was banned from the school’s board. The school also agreed to repay $1.25 million.
Final Thoughts
In general terms, people should of course be free to believe whatever they wish and to practise that belief.
However, “Freedom Of Religion” is not a shield that can be used to hide blatant fraud, and active abuse of people. The states of both NY and CA made the right call by closing this very blatant scam and bastion and abuse down.
Further Reading
Initial LA Times link is via Wayback machine. Even via there a paywall pops up, but if you access via a VPN then you skip that.
- LA Times Sep 20, 2024 – California Bible college students claim they were confined, surveilled and made to do unpaid labor
- LA Times Dec 17, 2024 – Judge orders California Bible college to cease operations after state hearing
- Roys Report Dec 18, 2024 – Olivet University Loses Its License to Operate in California But Says It Will Remain Open
- The full and very detailed BPPE report can be found here (31 page PDF)