Greenville Online: Erskine Students Harassed Over Religious Beliefs

NEWBERRY — The governance of Erskine College remains in limbo today after a Circuit Court judge extended a restraining order against the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church's plan to install a new board of trustees.

In a nearly packed courtroom at the historic Newberry County courthouse, Judge Eugene C. Griffith Jr. told attorneys on both sides that they had until Tuesday to submit final briefs, and he would make a decision within 10 days.

“The Erskine Alumni Association and the dismissed trustees have great confidence in the ability of the judge and in our judicial system, and they believe that the court will reach the right result in this matter,” said attorney John Devlin, who represents the plaintiffs in the case.

The Erskine Alumni Association and two of 14 Erskine trustees who were ousted by the ARP's governing body filed a complaint asking the court to rule that the church overstepped its authority by removing board members without cause and that the church doesn't own the property or assets of the college. They also asked the court to keep the synod from moving forward with its plans to restructure the board.

The issue arose after officials said an investigation by a church-appointed commission found that some professors at the liberal arts college in Abbeville County had created a “culture of intimidation” in which some students felt they were ridiculed because of their religious beliefs.

It also found that the board of trustees was unaware that the previous administration of the college six years ago transferred $1 million from a fund that had been donated for a specific purpose into the general operations of the college, Ken Wingate, a member of the commission, testified.

Also, the school inadvertently overextended scholarship offers by $600,000 during the past year, Wingate said.

The commission recommended downsizing the board from 30 to 16 in order to be better able to keep closer oversight on the college, he said.

The board, prior to being dissolved, issued a resolution “in a spirit of humility,” saying that it agreed in principle with the findings of the investigation and agreed to the downsizing of the board but wanted to do it over a six-year period instead of immediately, Wingate testified.

Attorneys for the alumni association and the ousted board members based their case on college bylaws that said trustees can be removed only by a two-thirds vote of the board, and then only for cause.

Keith Munson, representing the church, projected digital images of documents dating back to 1872 to make a case that those bylaws apply only to the board in removing its own members and that the synod has authority to both appoint and remove trustees as it sees fit.

Attorney Tom Gentry argued that Erskine is an independently registered nonprofit organization, governed by its own board, not by the conservative Greenville-based denomination that founded it in 1835.

Parker Young, one of the ousted trustees, testified that the ARP provides 3 percent of Erskine's budget.

“What the church did was not lawful, and it was certainly not Christian,” he said.