ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 2, 1996 TAG: 9609030022
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BUENA VISTA
It's been the traditional motto of 130-year-old Southern Virginia College for as long as anyone can remember:
"A posse, ad esse" - from possibility to actuality.
But the Mormon educators and businessmen who took over the failing two-year women's college this year found the motto needed a little modification to suit what they were up against.
"Now it's more like, 'Do whatever works,'" Dean Roger Barrus said.
The new board of directors took over the school May 13, naming Barrus dean, Richmond sociologist and counselor Toby Anderson dean of students, and Northern Virginia businessman David Ferrell president.
Their mission: Take an unaccredited school - known for most of its history as Southern Seminary and noted mainly for its equestrian program - and turn it into a four-year, coeducational school with a code of conduct like what colleges had 40 years ago: no alcohol or tobacco on campus, restricted dormitory visitation, no premarital sex.
They had just over three months to find students willing to come to a college with no federal or state financial aid available, and they were starting long after most high school seniors had committed to other colleges. Most of the existing student body had already left for other schools, too.
Newspaper stories and word of mouth in the Mormon community began to generate inquiries. In all, more than 1,000 people looked into the new Southern Virginia College, Barrus said.
The college rapidly changed its own application rules and projections. The hoped-for 400 students dropped to 250, then 125. The July 31 application deadline was extended and then abolished. Even partial applications were treated seriously, since many students couldn't get their high school transcripts during the summer.
Last week, applications were still coming in. Some applicants, who were offered slots and said they would come, were added to the class roster on that merit alone. They could just bring a deposit with them. A good many more have said they'll come in January, Barrus said.
Friday morning, the students began to arrive. In all, 77 are expected, though Ferrell wasn't discounting the possibility of up to 100.
Shannon Eichert of Colonial Heights waited too late to apply to Brigham Young University in Utah and thought she was going to a community college this year. When the 18-year-old Mormon heard through her church about SVC's strict behavioral code, "It was kind of an answer to my and especially my parents' prayers," she said.
"I've always wanted to be around that, and if I'd gone to another college I wouldn't have been around it as much," she said. Plus it meant not going out to Utah. "I didn't really want to be that far from home."
One third of this year's students are Virginians. Five are returning students, some of whom stuck around for the riding program. Most of the new students, as administrators expected, are Mormons.
Does that make Southern Virginia College a Mormon school?
Gov. George Allen has said he thinks it would be "great to have a Brigham Young [University] of the East."
Thanks for the support, Barrus said, but Allen is overstating their case.
The school is officially non-sectarian, but with "a campus environment that is respectful of religious belief and practice." The catalog lists no courses in religious instruction. Along with a Mormon Institute on campus will be a Baptist Student Union and Campus Catholic Ministries.
Barrus said leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have said the school will never be church-affiliated, like Brigham Young in Provo, Utah, and Ricks College in Rexford, Idaho.
But at least a few people in downtown Buena Vista believed they were getting a Mormon school. No problem, they said. They are just glad the school isn't closing, leaving another hole in their economically ailing town.
"I'm sure a lot of the kids coming here think it's a Mormon school," Barrus conceded. School leaders are trying their "level best" to make SVC a non-sectarian school, he said.
Anderson, the dean of students, said anyone concerned that the school ultimately will be as non-sectarian as it says it will be should look to scripture: "By their fruits, ye shall know them."
For now, Barrus acknowledges, Southern Virginia certainly might look like a Mormon school.
But given the school's new mission and the limited time officials had to market it, could it, in this first year, have been anything else? Will it ever be anything else?
But it's got horses
The story of how Barrus and his friends took over SVC is already becoming part of campus lore.
Barrus was talking with then-SVC President John Ripley last spring. Ripley talked about how the school would fold soon if someone didn't step in and resuscitate it.
Barrus, then a political science professor at Hampden-Sydney College, seized the opportunity to develop a school like what he wanted for his daughter, Corinne, who had been turned down by BYU and Ricks.
He went to a friend from church, Richmond investor Glade Knight, and asked if he wanted to acquire a college. Knight said no. But it's got horses, Barrus pleaded. OK, Knight said.
They made their pitch to the board of trustees, which accepted it that afternoon.
Ask any of the school's new leaders why they wanted to run a college with a mission like SVC's and they all talk about the "terrific pent-up demand" they recognized for it in their own church community.
Ralph Olmo, the college's vice president for planning and assessment, points to the direction his church has taken since the 1960s. Thirty years ago, he said, there were two million Mormons in the world, and they had BYU and Ricks College to attend. Now, there are 10 million Mormons, and they still have BYU and Ricks.
The result is thousands of students who would like to go to BYU and Ricks, but can't get in. That means incredible growth potential for SVC, which traditionally has had fewer than 250 students.
"I think it's safe to say we are here because we had a population in the LDS community that would be a base for the college," Barrus said. But he adds that "there's lots of people who want an institutional environment that's not antagonistic to their beliefs."
Barrus and his colleagues envision an ecumenical school with a liberal arts curriculum known as a "great books" approach. Students will go right to the source of learning. In biology, instead of reading about Darwin in a text book, they'll read Darwin's actual writings. They've retained 10 of the 22 full- and part-time faculty members listed in last year's catalog. Five faculty members - including Barrus, who will teach some - are new.
Socially, the school will be more like what Barrus said he experienced as an undergraduate many years ago.
Hairstyles should be "unassuming," the catalog says. Shoes must be worn in public areas, shorts and skirts should be about knee length, and men cannot wear earrings.
Tobacco and alcohol will be banned. Caffeine, which is prohibited by Mormon teaching, won't be banned, but, Barrus said, it won't be particularly easy to find, either.
Visitation will be restricted to dorm lounges from 5 to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. Room visits will be allowed Sunday evenings until 9 p.m.
The rules regarding sex are admittedly vague. In dealing with such instances, Barrus said, the administration will rely on an adage coined by former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who was asked to define obscenity. "I don't know what it is," Stewart said, "but I know it when I see it."
Anderson said the point is to teach students that there are natural consequences to their actions. If you teach them that principle, he said, you don't have to make a rule addressing every specific action.
"I don't think it's only LDS kids that want this," Barrus said. But for now, that's what they've got.
And the reason for it may stretch back into the previous school administration.
Accrediation woes
When the new administration took over SVC, it got a beautiful campus, a nationally known riding program, $4.5 million in debt and what it thought was a slim chance at salvaging the school's accreditation.
SVC's debt had become so burdensome, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools determined, that it could no longer function as it should. Based on that, SACS declined to renew the school's accreditation. Then-president Ripley pursued an appeal of the decision.
Just days after the new administration took over the school, SACS announced the appeal had been denied, despite apparent evidence that the new school leaders had already made arrangements to correct the school's money problems.
"We thought we had indications that it would come through," Barrus said.
According to Olmo, the college's head of planning and assessment, SACS agreed that SVC may have arranged for funds to clear up its debt, but the loss of accreditation "was already a done deal." The appeals board could not consider any new evidence, only questions of procedure in the initial review.
Who would have thought, Barrus said, that even with that rule, SACS would ignore clear proof that the money problems were on their way to being fixed?
Part of the school's debt is a $3.5 million bond, with a balloon payment of $2.1 million due by March 1998. That, as much as anything else, is what killed the old SVC, Barrus said.
The new administration quickly found an anonymous donor who agreed to make that balloon payment or pay off the bond entirely, if that's what was needed when the time came, Barrus said. But SACS could not even consider that. The school has reapplied for accreditation with SACS and one other agency, but the process takes two years.
Without accreditation, the school was in a bind. It could offer no federal financial aid programs or Virginia Tuition Assistance Grants, need-based student aid available only to students of schools accredited by SACS. It's also difficult to transfer or go to graduate school from a non-accredited school.
That - obviously - made it tough to recruit students. "Students ask pointed questions," Barrus said.
The school is trying to overcome the lack of financial aid by underwriting part of the tuition for every student. Tuition and room and board total $14,000 per year, but each student is being asked to come up with only $7,500.
Fishing for students
Given the time they had to find students, Anderson said, "we decided that until September, we were going to fish the pond where we knew the big fish were biting" - the Mormon community.
They ran advertisements in the Salt Lake City newspapers and on the Mormon radio network, focusing their efforts in what Barrus calls the "core LDS region" - Utah and southern Idaho.
Barrus believes many inquiries have come as a result of news coverage and the more than 13,000 times Internet users have visited the school's page on the World Wide Web.
With this first class under its belt, Anderson said, the school will broaden its efforts. Administrators are planning a two- or three-month road trip to find students of all denominations.
"We're here to cultivate spiritual growth in kids," Anderson said. "I mean, if they're Buddhist, I don't really care."
But rounding up students isn't the only concern.
President David Ferrell has gone before the Buena Vista City Council and the Rockbridge County Board of Supervisors, trying to get each to back $500,000 of the $3.5 million bond. His hope is that having the stability of government backing will give him a bargaining chip to renegotiate the payment schedule with the bondholders and get out from under the huge payment due in March 1998. But both City Council and the board have hinted they aren't interested.
The Virginia General Assembly approved giving $500,000 to the college earlier this year - the check is due to be cut this week - but beyond that, the school doesn't have a lot of ready resources.
Without accreditation, Barrus said, school officials are prohibited from approaching corporate and family foundations that might otherwise help them.
And since it's the first year of the "new" school, they have no alumni to hit up.
"The college is having to lean heavily on the president and trustees to raise money from, basically, church members," said Chuck Watson, who works in development at the school.
Watson is also about to send out a letter from Ferrell to the alumnae of the old school. "I sincerely believe there are some alumnae with deep pockets who are thrilled the college is still open and may be willing to give generously," he said.
But given the Mormon presence at the school, isn't the new administration setting the school up to be a de facto Mormon institution from now on?
Anderson goes back to scripture to answer that:
"Just judge us by our fruits."
LENGTH: Long : 231 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Stephanie Klein-Davis/Staff. 1. Officials at Southernby CNBVirginia College had to be happy with 77 students - many of them
checked in Friday - expected to enroll this semester. Initial
expectations stood at 400, but steadily declined from there. 2.
Sasha Marchan, (left) from Baton Rouge, La., talks with freshman
Chad Winger (sitting) on Friday about a work-study program at
Southern Virginia College in Buena Vista, She is accompanied by her
parents, Anthony and Marlene Marchan. 3. SVC President David Ferrel
talks with Cristopher and Marlo Balmanno, married and both 20,
during enrollment Friday. color.