This book contains essential information for parents and for students who are preparing for college and contemplating the scant options out there for a wholesome -- some might say a sane -- environment in which to live and study. I found myself wishing Mrs. Riley had covered several other colleges I've heard about; Grove City College in particular comes to mind. And I'd have appreciated an entire chapter on Wheaton. But with regard to the colleges and universities she does home in on, I learned much that I had wondered about. For example, Mrs. Riley examines the dating scene (or courtship scene, or hooking up scene, as the case may be) in detail and captures the ethos on each campus much more thoroughly than does that other indispensable guide for conservative students, ISI's Choosing the Right College. Although her writing is workmanlike, with occasional small lapses in grammar or diction, Mrs. Riley deserves high praise for the earnestness with which she pursues her subject, for her sense of the interesting questions, and -- with one possible exception, to which I'll return -- for the evenhandedness with which she treats schools of various faiths.
Among the schools she analyzes, Baylor seems to come off best. Interestingly, Baylor is the only subject school in which the administration is attempting a return to religious values that were compromised during the sixties and ensuing decades. The other schools discussed in the book are either still loosening up or have stood firm. Perhaps as a consequence, there is more of a discernible struggle at Baylor to make a place for cultural renewal; yet the code of conduct there appears to be advisory rather than compulsory, and I gather that Mrs. Riley approves. She seems to think that the most successful religious schools need to accommodate the culture to about the extent that Baylor does in order to analyze it or challenge it fruitfully.
Not surprisingly, accommodations in the form of clubs or forums dealing with homosexuality are among the most controversial at religious schools, and Baylor`s position on homosexuality, as cited with approval by Mrs. Riley, is instructive. Although Baylor's president reacted forcefully when the student newspaper advocated same-sex marriage, others in the administration have pointed to a need for greater opportunities for students to examine and discuss homosexuality from various perspectives. I question that. Once "love the sinner, hate the sin" becomes merely one point of view among many, it is a short step to the current Harvard controversy, wherein actress Jada Pinkett Smith has been criticized by the the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance because her remarks -- describing her own experiences with marriage, children, and career -- were too "heteronormative." In the end, I prefer the honest response of Thomas Aquinas College to a hypothetical homosexual student: "Then, you have a cross to bear of a more than usually difficult life of chastity." But Mrs. Riley's predilections are subtle. For the most part, she reports -- and reports well -- and we are left to decide.
Mrs. Riley may have given one school short shrift, though. It seems that after she had written a somewhat critical newspaper article about Patrick Henry College, the administrators took offense, warned another college against her, and curtailed her visits. I of course don't know who is right about what -- in a letter to the WSJ, PHC says she visited only two classes and drew unwarranted conclusions; she gives a different account -- but what interests me is that Mrs. Riley concludes on the basis of little or no evidence that the school is anti-Catholic. What actually happened, according to the book, was that a PHC administrator mistakenly assumed on the basis of the biographical information she had provided that Mrs. Riley herself was Catholic, and then suggested that her religion may have led her to an overly critical view of the school. It seems to me that the worst the administrator can be accused of is a lack of tact, or perhaps naivete. I'm left wondering whether Mrs. Riley's pique may have interfered with her analysis in this one instance.
But it's a very good book. There isn't another out there quite like it, to my knowledge.
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