A Beka Books and Pensacola Christian College: The Truth

If you studied in Grace Christian High School (now Grace Christian College), your textbooks would have undoubtedly been by A Beka Books. And if you ever looked at your books in detail, you would remember the name Pensacola Christian College (PCC), in Pensacola, Florida. But what do we really know about A Beka Books and PCC?

Well today you're going to find out.

A Beka Books is the publishing arm of Pensacola Christian College. PCC is a fundamentalist, Baptist college in Pensacola, Florida. What is notable about this school is it's several fundamentalist restrictions and methods of punishment.

Take a look at some of the rules stated in the 2000-01 student handbook:

• Women must wear a skirt or dress at all times. Jean skirts are allowed at dating outings only. Long shorts (i.e., "gauchos" or "culottes") which reach the knee are permitted for athletic activity.
• (women) You may not wear pants in your dorm, although sweats ARE permitted after prayer group.
• (women) No two-piece swimming suits (although, this is a bit irrelevant since a male should never see you swimming).
• It should be noted that at any time, the administration (or students authorized by the administration) may go through your room, unannounced, looking for anything unauthorized. Legally or not, this will include opening drawers and going through paperwork. You may or may not be present, and you may or may not be notified.
• After bed-time ("lights out:" 11:00 every day, including weekends) you may receive demerits for talking, taking your contacts out, having your feet on the floor (or possibly suspended a few inches from the floor), being in the bathroom, or basically doing anything but lying in bed.
• No extra studying during exams.
• You may not put up a picture of unmarried people in physical contact unless they are "little kids."
• You may not open your window.
• You may not adjust your thermostat.
• Males and Females are to use separate public beaches and may not go to the popular Pensacola Beach or to the nearby Boardwalk.
• You may not go to a public library.
• You may not go onto the campus of any other college in the Pensacola area.
• Women are not allowed to hold off campus jobs. (All school jobs during the year pay minimum wage or below)
• A large amount of magazines are considered pornography and are not allowed, including: Men's Health, Muscle&Fitness, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, etc.
• You may not interact with a student of the opposite sex in any way off-campus without prior approval and an approved chaperone.
• Each gender must use segregated stairways, elevators and in some cases, sidewalks.
• There is to be no physical contact between students of the opposite sex, except perhaps on some "dating outings," where hand-holding games are played.
• Siblings of the opposite sex should not interact in unchaperoned areas to abstain from the "appearance of evil."

Stay with me, stay with me! Your brain can make it through this in one piece. Now, what happens when you break any of these rules? Well the punishments are equally controversial. 

Demerits. The basic unit of punishment. Accumulation of 75, 100, or 125 of these will result in "campusing." 150 will result in possible expulsion at PCC's discretion.

Campusing. The student is, in effect, "grounded," for a period of time, usually no shorter than a week. This means he may not leave campus except for preapproved reasons such as work. He will also be required to turn in the keys to any car registered to him.

He also must sign a statement saying he will have no communication (verbal or not) with another campused student. If a person in his room is already campused, he is required to change rooms, and will not change back after the campusing ends.

Socialling. While socialled, a student may have no communication with another student of the opposite sex except in in classroom or preapproved situations.

Expulsion. This is removal from the school. Usually the student is forced to "withdraw." All cases are under the discretion of the administration. It must be noted a student may be expelled at any time for any reason. It need not have anything to do with accumulation of demerits, an explicit act, or wrongdoing of any type. Lest you think otherwise, people from freshman to seniors are kicked-out each year without ever being given a specific reason.

Shadowing. Though not a specific punishment, it often accompanies the above disciplines. Shadowing is when a student is made to accompany a floor-leader or other PCC staff member 24 hours a day. He will sleep in the floor-leaders room, attend his classes (or sit in the dean's office) and eat all meals with him. The student is allowed no interaction with any other student, with limited access to those outside the school (e.g. parents). The student is shadowed from the time he has been accused or suspected of a "serious" infraction until he is exonerated or punished. There is an implied "presumption of guilt." Any student is vulnerable to having his life severely interrupted, possibly suffering exceptional emotional and spiritual distress as he is isolated, pressured, and scared, being made to feel guilty even when there is no reason.

Do you really want your children or your relatives learning from a book by an institution that still believes in the subjugation of women and the inherent "evil" of any interaction with them? There is a term for the people that run PCC, "fundies", short for fundamentalists. Why should you be concerned if you're studying books made by fundies? Because they're the type of people that say this:

How is it that when the Spaniards, the French, the Portuguese, and the British went to colonise different islands around the world? How would the people have gotten there if there were no airplanes? The distances would have been too far for that many people to take a boat, so how did they get there? Did the land masses just "magically" move, such as your flawed theory of plate techtonics says? Did humans once have wings and then lose them through "natural selection"? 

If you can't answer this, then there is no other logical explaination than God did it and that Jesus Christ is the Lord.

So do you reallyyy want to keep using those books? If I were you, I'd start doing something the people at PCC don't want their students doing - thinking for myself.

One last quote:

 Yes. DNA can never be proven. Evolutionists are obsessed with it because they always say ''chimps share 97% DNA with modern man'' etc. That's great, however you would then need to prove DNA is real.

*Update:
Oh, and those Chick tracts they sell at campus sometimes? Yep, you guessed it. Chick Publications is fundamentalist Christian.

*Update no. 2:
Here is an actual memo for all the chaperones at PCC warning about "spring fever":