The Department of Education imposed a record $14 million fine on Liberty University, an evangelical Christian school located in Lynchberg, Virginia, over violations of a federal campus safety law, officials said Tuesday.
Liberty University was founded in 1971 by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell, who wanted to create a Christian university for evangelical believers.
The Department of Education said the $14 million fine was the largest fine ever imposed for violating the Clery Act, which requires colleges to maintain and disclose campus crime statistics and security information.
The review followed a 2021 lawsuit, in which 12 women claimed that the school created an environment that increased the likelihood of sexual assault and rape, including by discouraging sex before marriage. That case was settled in 2022.
The Department of Education’s Clery Act review, conducted by the office of Federal Student Aid, identified 11 “violations,” such as failing to maintain an accurate, daily crime log; failing to issue timely warnings to the campus community about reportable crimes; and failing to comply with numerous sexual violence prevention and response requirements.
“Through the Clery Act, schools are obligated to take action that creates safe and secure campus communities, investigate complaints, and responsibly disclose information about crimes and other safety concerns. We will continue to hold schools accountable if they fail to do so,” Richard Cordray, Federal Student Aid chief operating officer, said in a statement.
The next largest fine was $4.5 million, imposed in 2019 on Michigan State University in connection with the investigation of Larry Nassar, a sports medicine physician who sexually abused 265 female gymnasts over a period of decades.
In a statement, Liberty University admitted past compliance deficiencies, but took issue with the way the Department of Education conducted its review, noting that the methodology of its investigation and review was “drastically different from [DOE’s] historic treatment of other universities.”
“Liberty disagrees with this approach and maintains that we have repeatedly endured selective and unfair treatment by the Department,” it said.
Of course LU was treated differently, because, in the eyes of the Marxist functionaries at DOE, they are terrorist and enemies of the state. Obviously they are not going to get the same treatment as the typical Marxism indoctrination factory.
Comment:
Point one: The DOE’s leverage, which it is using to try to destroy LU, is federal financial aid. The money no longer comes with no strings attached, if it ever did, and that has been obvious for several decades. Any “Christian” school that is still accepting federal financial aid at this late date almost deserves whatever they get. In today’s Marxist America, the only route to freedom for Christian schools—freedom to promote the biblical worldview of sexuality, freedom to uphold Christian standards of deportment and behavior, and academic freedom—is to not take federal money.
Point two: Many of you think that the current Marxist revolution is survivable if you just hunker down and mind your own business. You are wrong. The only way to hunker down far enough is to live by lies, in a way that effectively repudiates your Christianity and nullifies your Christian witness.
“You may not be interested in politics,” as Pericles said, “but politics is interested in you.” You might not be interested in Leftist politics, but the meaning of totalitarianism is that when totalitarians are in control, they do not leave you with any private space to live your own life. “The personal is political,” was a slogan popular with 1960s Marxist student groups, and those people are now running the government, along with everything else that matters in America. All is political, and they intend to control all, right down to your innermost thoughts. That is what “totalitarianism” means. And if you think what is happening in America today is in any sense normal or “politics as usual,” you are living in an alternative reality.
The totalitarian Leftists who are in firm control of the federal government and all of its constituent agencies know who their enemies are. Conservative Christians are their enemies. Anyone who is conservative, or Christian (and conservative evangelicals voted or Donald Trump at a rate of 80% to 20%) is their enemy, and they will try to destroy you. They know that, whether we know it or not. (Many Adventist PARL types pretend not to know it, or have calculated that if we just promote abortion and act like godless communists—which is what we’ve been doing for the last 50 years—we’ll be destroyed last.)
The center of American Marxism has for almost a century been American academia; it has long been controlled by the radical Left (Revelation 11; French Revolution beast from the pit of hell atheistic ideology, for those of you who insist every current event be couched in terms of Adventist prophetic interpretation). Liberty University is one of maybe five or six universities in the United States that does not toe the Marxist line. That marks them for destruction, and destruction is what the DOE just gave them a taste of. $14 million for a private school—three times the largest previous fine, which was levied on a public school—is not intended to deter, it is an attempt to destroy.
Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of his fury will fail.
Prov. 22:8