Editorial: Bus fare fiasco symptomatic of deeper problems

by Christian Bell, Editor in Chief

As we reported this week, Calvin Theological Seminary students are paying at least 60 percent more to use the city’s public transportation system, due to no fault of their own. While CTS and college administrators traded barbs about who was responsible, the exchange of blame tells a darker story about relations between the college and the seminary.

Furthermore, CTS’s own unwillingness to step up and solve the problem suggests that occasional rhetoric about “creation stewardship” is perhaps merely a theological volley intended to pacify a certain environmentally-conscious constituency.

Depending on who you talk to, the relationship between the college and seminary is either hot or cold. President Neal Plantinga has expressed in previous interviews with me that the college and seminary administrations are trying to work more closely together, and some evidence of that can be found in joint partnerships like the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship.

However, the portrait painted of what goes on “behind the scenes” with the two institutions is one of malaise.

The bus fare fiasco exemplifies the problem well. College administrators claimed they had no knowledge of what CTS students were doing. When CTS student Joel De Moor asked questions, he was given plenty of reasonable answers, but no offers of help. When CTS administrators asked the college for an explanation, the excuse for the problem they received was that the issue was ultimately one of funding.

College administrators shouldn’t feel overly responsible for the problem. CTS Dean of Students Richard Sytsma indicated that the seminary has made efforts, however half-heartedly, to encourage students to ride the bus. CTS administrators somewhere had to have known about the issue, and shouldn’t have acted overly surprised when students raised questions to them.

The bigger question, though, is why it took a student to get the two institutions talking, especially about a relatively minor issue. Do CTS and college administrators ever talk regularly about the day-to-day business of their respective institutions?

All evidence points to no. Last year, CTS students found themselves abruptly and rudely shut out of the college’s Rhetoric Center, where they had previously gone to receive proofreading and assistance with composition. The shutdown came a week before final papers were due, and many students – especially international students – were forced to scramble to find proofreaders. CTS administrators offered a sheepish “sorry,” and college administrators pointed to – what else? – funding as the source of the problem.

(CTS students, in gracious fashion, stepped up to the plate and filled the void left by the two bickering institutions by proofreading each other’s papers.)

How do these issues keep happening? And more importantly, why do CTS students keep getting trapped in the middle?

It’s well and good for President Plantinga to claim that the college and seminary are working together on programs where the two institutions’ interests predictably overlap, but it’s an entirely different matter for students to get slammed twice in as many years with logistical hassles because mom and dad aren’t getting along.

The great divorce between the two schools – the college and seminary officially split into two separate boards of trustees in 1991 – has had the same corrosive effect on the “kids” (the students) as an actual divorce does. They may still live in the same house (the Knollcrest campus), but neither institution seems to have been truly committed to the health and well-being of the other for years. This should be scandalous to two institutions whose common denominational heritage deeply deplores such deceptive divisions.

Speaking of deceptions, if you sit through a few years’ worth of classes at CTS, you’ll hear much talk about being creation-affirming, creation stewardship, etc. The goodness of creation – and our divine mandate to care for it – is a frequent topic of discussion in classes and in the broader community. Why is it, then, that calls for greater environmental stewardship have gone largely unheeded?

Earlier this year, Kerux staff writer Walter Miedema suggested some easy steps CTS could take to be more conservative about its use of natural resources (“Stewardship at CTS doesn't extend to the environment,” Kerux, Dec. 4, 2006). One of the things that Miedema highlighted was transportation – why not have more students carpool or ride the bus? Anybody who has driven to campus knows what a hassle it can be to find a parking spot in the middle of the day. Isn’t the use of public transportation and carpooling a potential solution to this?

At the very least, CTS administrators should be willing to take the small – very small – steps of equaling out the bus fares to their pre-fare-fiasco level. The cost to the seminary would probably be less than a few hundred dollars per year. Of course, CTS could go even further and do what even the college has been unwilling to do – fully subsidize the cost of bus passes to discourage students from driving their cars to and from campus all the time. The Rapid buses go all over Grand Rapids, and contrary to some people’s claims, are very efficient.

Public transportation is something that Americans – especially automobile-loving Michiganders – have never fully warmed up to, but the cost savings and fuel savings are important. Nobody is claiming that CTS students riding the bus in place of driving their cars will solve an oil crisis, but Dutch and Reformed folk have always been of the “let’s do our part” mentality when it comes to making positive changes in the environment around us.

Talking about creation stewardship is one thing. Actually digging into our pockets to make it more attractive is another.

One without the other is just hollow rhetoric – much like the rhetoric about the college and seminary getting along well together.

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