ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, May 13, 1996 TAG: 9605130129
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BUENA VISTA
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
STARTING TODAY, THE COLLEGE will be managed by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The speeches were standard commencement fare in one respect, full of references to fond memories of the past and uncertain prospects for the future.
But at Southern Virginia College on Sunday, the words were meant not just for the 60 graduates of the women's junior college, but for the institution itself.
Starting today, the college will undergo perhaps the most dramatic change in its 129-year history as its management is turned over to a group of educators and businessmen who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The hilltop campus will become a four-year, coeducational liberal arts college. While that alone is significant change, many students and faculty members attending Sunday's graduation ceremony wondered how much the college will be further transformed by the Mormon doctrine.
"I personally don't like it," said Bonnie Boettcher, whose tears were not concealed by the dark sunglasses she wore shortly after receiving an associate's degree.
"People leave this school now because they think it's too strict, and now they're going to make it worse," she said, referring to a code of conduct that will ban alcohol and tobacco from campus and a dress code that will regulate shorts and skirts to knee-length.
Only about a dozen of the private school's students plan to return next year, said Dean of Students Mimi Knight. But that may have more to do with the fact that the financially strapped school was slated to close this year - before it was saved by the group of Mormon investors - than with the direction its new owners will take.
Many of the students had made plans to transfer to other schools by the time the purchase was announced in April, said Knight, who also is leaving, for an administrative position at Bridgewater College.
"This college is going to change so dramatically, I figured it would be a good time for me to change, too," she said.
Other faculty members, who have been instructed by the college's new administration to reapply for their positions, were wondering if Sunday's commencement would be their last.
"I think it's just a big question mark," said Becky McKenzie, who has taught sociology at the school for two years. "We really don't know."
While some students and alumni lamented the changes - one commencement speaker called the graduates "sisters of a lost institution" - they were also grateful that the school will not only survive, but expand, under new ownership.
"This is really good for Buena Vista because I think the college will grow," Knight said. Enrollment is expected to leap from 165 this year to at least 300 next fall, as students - most of them Mormons - flock to the first Mormon-based college on the East Coast.
Although Southern Virginia will remain nonsectarian, its owners make no secret that many of its students will be those who are unable to attend Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, or Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho. Those Mormon colleges are forced to turn away hundreds of applicants seeking a school that promotes strong values and religious principles.
Glade Knight, a Richmond investor who will take over as the chairman of the board of trustees at Southern Virginia, said some current board members and faculty members already have been invited to stay on at the school.
At a joint board meeting today, Glade Knight and the other new administrators will officially begin the work of improving and expanding a college that just a few months ago was planning to close its doors for good.
"It's not often you can be 129 years old and get a new beginning and a new life," Glade Knight said.
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. 1. The doors to Southern Virginiaby CNBCollege will remain open, though with many changes. The new school
will be a four-year coed institution run with Mormon principles.
color. 2. Emotions are evident in graduates' faces during Sunday's
graduation at Southern Virginia College.