Palm Beach Atlantic University

Date: May 04 2005
Major: History/Histories (art history/etc.) (This Major's Salary over time)
PBAC is theocratic concentration camp where other students will glady enforce their role as Gestapo and belittle your personal freedom of conscience at 99% of opportunities, so you are better off keeping your mouth shut unless you are crying you heart out to Jesus and asking him to make wiping this abberation of a mammon-worshiping college off the earth first thing post-rapture. I was misled from the beginning given that the school is Southern Baptist fundamentalist in non-denominational clothing. Yes, the rules are tolerable once you realize it is officially nothing more than a formality to their Christian Right backers and leave the student body to be your judge jury and executioner, but it is the dichotomy between the many 'holier than thou' students whose gross misapplication and dare I say 'Scriptural amnesia' when it is convenient for them crushes any authentic expression of Christianity here.

I left after one year so broken in spirit thinking that under the auspices of Christian fellowship my liberal Episcopalian views would be tolerated, that I enrolled in far better academically and spiritually (the SECULAR school gave me a chance to get over my WASTE of a YEAR of my LIFE!) FAU in Boca Raton. So screwed up was my shock at the conformity and snake tongue 'chapels', etc that I enrolled in a years worth of Judaic Studies classes at FAU just to reclaim a relationship with God that was so horribly, horribly stolen from me.

The chapels teach you nothing about faith. More or less it is 'Christian children's fund spokesperson pay-x-dollars a month and buy your way into heaven', or else they dedliberately bring a liberal/'not of the mindset' speaker in just so that students can flood the Goebbels-style student paper with Christian bigotry. One chapel concerned a Holocaust survivor and her conversion to Christianity (out of conviction, isn't that the only true kind?) replete with a bigoted recall of the Q&A session. Appears that she reacted to a student's pressing of her PERSONAL relationship with Jesus by saying "He is MINE!" Yes, seeing that Jesus lived and died a faithful Jew, it would be only right for this Jewish woman to say that. But oh no, both among students and the hidden propaganda of the school you will find that same old evangelical theology of contempt and antisemitism (Christianity replaces Judaism - Jews are especially singled out in fear and ignorance by the white upper middle class conservative students for their failure to see their so called spiritual darkness. If you have missionaries for Christ who believe and act in this way, who can blame non-Christians?

The administration cares so little for students that even if you confront them, which I did concerning something called

American Free Enterprise Day Chapel

which glorifies the connection between organized religion and its tacit/if not open support of unrestrained capitalism. Basically you wave US flags around the gym when a Christian businessperson prattles on about how God has blessed them and then get down on the ground and worship the God of money. Well I went to talk to the prez of the school right after, right there on the gym floor, and he being so concerned about my opinion heard my complaints just enough so that he could dismiss them and say 'it's never going to change' so that he could brush off his shoulders and collect his huge paycheck.

The WORST aspect of PBA is now they try to pass themselves off as a university when they are clearly not. They have but on PHD program in pharmacy, and NO master's! To be properly qualified as a uni, your school must offer the highest terminal degree in several recognized fields, and PBA is all undergrad and this one sigle doctoral program which makes no sense.

They are insidious about land grabbbing too, by simply buying out (where they get the $ after brainwashing you that they are so benevolent as to help pay your tuition buy charging less I'll never know) surrounding offices and businesses. There is a private house right in the center of campus which has consistantly refused to sell, and is so degraded just for BEING a non conformist in their midst that the oh so religious kids that smoke, etc on that private property (so they are out of reach of the admin's avenging angels) flick all their waste onto the poor people's lawn, driveway, etc that even though their personal morality is far below the impossible standard officially expected that they do still join in on the collective stoning by defacing private property.

Even though there is Clematis right there, surrounded by the ghetto (in which I went to church simply to escape their serpent like mentality) you would never know it because you are wrapped in swaddling clothes of non thinking academics and beach diversions.

I had one class where the prof had no textbook (should be disconcerting) but simply printed out his grammatically incorrect lecture notes by the paragraph and READ them to US! That was the sociology class.

The only redeeming value to PBA in my estimation is that it's in WPB and was a weigh-station for a year and my ticket to Florida from NJ, and for it being in Florida I am thankful. But I got out of there mentally after I think the first 5 seconds, and physically after one year.

And if you think this sounds completely vituperative, you'd be right - coming from someone who is considering deeply, becoming a f'in PASTOR or theology professor! PBA crushed me spiritually. I compare my year there to digging a hole one day only to have to fill it in the next day, over and over until you are made into a conformist drone worshiping a white Gentile Jesus who hates anyone that isn't in line with the death march to the crematoria of your intellectual and spiritual freedom.

I retained my faith only because it is personal and inside the deepest treasure chamber of my heart, in spite of repeated attempts by PBA to deny its uniqueness. It took religious Jewish professors @ FAU to convince me that still believing in Christianity was 'OK' Ironic, no?

Avoid PBA like the plague unless you want a simultaneously non threatening (as long as you are the in group) Christinity combined with an equally violent controlling Christianity that will ruthlessly root out expose and destroy any heresy.

At PBA, I learned to keep my friends close, and my enemies closer.

"Only a fool would let the enemy teach his or her children" -Malcolm X