In the aftermath of the scandal surrounding the optional sex toy demonstration in Prof. John Michael Bailey’s human sexuality class, an Alternative Student Breaks trip was temporarily left without a place to stay. The southern Tennessee church where ASB had arranged to stay called co-program directors Jenny Haag and Elizabeth Machesky on March 18 and canceled their reservation less than a week before the students were scheduled to leave.
Clif Roth, pastor of Community Baptist Church in Hixson, Tenn., said Northwestern had developed “quite a reputation” that his church could not risk supporting, Haag said.
Haag said ASB ended up paying several hundred dollars for last-minute accommodations elsewhere. The group normally pays nothing, due to the goodwill of local churches.
Roth said he and the members of his church initially supported helping the students as they workedwith the a trail-building organization called the Cumberland Trail Conference.
He said when the church first agreed to help, he had never heard of NU.
“We were welcoming anybody to come down and help clean up the Cumberland,” Roth said. “I called a few members of our church, and we decided that that would be a good work – that we could house those kids and they could do that and it wouldn’t be a problem.”
The problem arose when the church’s local newspaper wrote about the NU scandal.
Roth said the story made the front page of the newspaper’s life section. He said he was wary of the associations community members might make if they found out the church was supporting the University.
“I decided I wanted to keep … (NU) at an arm’s length because I didn’t really want the backlash of that coming back and saying our church supported this school and this school was in support of this event,” he said.
Haag and Machesky criticized Bailey for not being conscientious about the repercussions of the demonstration.
“I had qualms with not necessarily Bailey’s actions themselves but how he represented himself and NU to the outside community,” said Haag, a McCormick senior.
Machesky also said ASB should not have suffered because of an unrelated incident.
“It’s small-minded to equate 14 individuals who are giving up their week to perform service learning and volunteer with a sex demonstration that was the action of one professor,” the Weinberg junior said.
Roth said he considered the value of ASB’s mission when making his decision.
“That’s what feels so bad about the whole thing was the fact that these kids probably had nothing to do with that,” Roth said. “These kids are probably as clean as a pin … and probably shouldn’t be punished because of this stupid professor’s decision.”
“I hate that part of it,” he added.
Machesky acknowledged the church probably would not have even heard about the story had it not been for its national media coverage.
“Of course if the church would have heard of it in some other way, then they still wouldn’t have let us stay,” she said. “So I guess it is because of the media storm, but the actual reason was that it even happened. The church clearly disagrees with the actions.”
