"This loneliness affected me deeply while I was at Samford, and I was not yet aware that I was gay."

Dear Dr. Taylor,

My name is Emily, and I am a graduate of the class of 2020. As a brief recap of my time at Samford, I was a member of the University Fellows program, majored in Communication Sciences and Disorders, and minored in Music and Spanish. I played multiple instruments in almost every musical ensemble on campus including marching band, orchestra, pep band, percussion ensemble, a string quartet, pit orchestra, and briefly jazz band. I was a member of the Samford Crew team for four years, and was Vice President of Regattas for two years. I am now a graduate student pursuing my doctorate of audiology at Purdue University.

I avoided campus ministries as much as possible during my time at Samford, with the exception of Home Groups. This is because I grew up ELCA Lutheran, and actively claimed that faith as my own while I was in high school. I felt significantly spiritually lonely while I was at Samford. Students, churches, bible studies, and campus ministries used language I didn’t agree with. They had a different concept about what a faith journey looked like. It wasn’t the politically controversial items I disagreed with, it was the small things: age of baptism, re-baptism, hearing people talk about how old they were when they “got saved.”

Because I didn’t have a car and I could only visit churches my friends with cars wanted to visit, I didn’t find a church home where I felt comfortable until my junior year. Preventing certain denominations from accessing campus discriminates against those who are privileged enough to have a vehicle to leave campus to access the churches they desire to access. Financial privilege, though it is something so many Samford students possess, should not be a determining factor in whether or not students can access their denomination.

This loneliness affected me deeply while I was at Samford, and I was not yet aware that I was gay. My heart aches for students experiencing that loneliness now, in ways far more dangerous than I did.

Now acutely aware that I am undeniably gay, while I am as hurt, angry, and disappointed as so many others and I could easily add my personal tale of trauma to the campaign, I write instead to challenge you.

Why are you so insecure that you cannot allow your students to be in the presence of dissenting opinions? An institution that has to shelter its members from other opinions and prevent them from thinking for themselves in order to remain in power is not a religion—it's a cult.

If your faith is too fragile to exist in the presence of other denominations, what does that say about you?

If you think the faith of your students is that easily "swayed" by the presence of another denomination, how little respect for your students do you have?

Sheltering young adult believers from opinions you do not approve of is not benefitting them in the way that you think it is. If you give them sand to build their house on, it will wash away in the rain.

When your students leave Samford, they will encounter these denominations. They will encounter children of God who are gay, who know firmly that God loves them. If you prevent them from encountering different faiths while they are at Samford, you are robbing them of the opportunity to have conversations about these controversial topics within the supportive Samford bubble. You are robbing them of the opportunity both to learn from each other's differences, and also to be strengthened by those who share the same beliefs they do.

Finally, would you rather that your students who are queer lose their faith entirely in being isolated from the communities that would accept them, because you are too insecure to allow them the freedom to believe something different than you do?

My God is not that fragile. My God does not need approval for who She loves. My God will love Her queer children, on your campus and elsewhere, whether you want it to happen or not. You are not the first place we will encounter this targeted hate, nor will it be the last. But this archaic intolerance is damaging to the health of the Samford community, damaging to your students (both queer, “orthodox,” and questioning), and damaging to the future of the University.

These costs will be on your hands. Shielding your students is not saving them.

Sincerely,
Emily Sandgren
Class of 2020