Tanner Ward

Review of Cornerstone Universtity

Let's just do this in bullet points for simplicity...

Let's just do this in bullet points for simplicity.

- My best friend was assaulted by his upstairs neighbor in Knol. After they decided not to press charges, Campus Safety told him and his wife to stay away from their own apartment building until the offender had moved out. That's victim blaming. They should have posted a campus safety officer outside the building at all times until the offender left. The victims shouldn't have to leave their own home.

- Campus Services is 100% incompetent. Our stovetop fan broke, so they unhooked it, now every time we cook it steams up our whole apartment. My friend's A/C broke last year, so they literally just cut the cord. Two years ago my door frame broke entirely off because the apartment building was in such disrepair, so they just nail gunned it like 30 times. 95% of all the repairs they do are wrong or not done at all.

- Chapels are TERRIBLE. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to chapel and not even heard a single verse read. And you can get out of chapels by paying a ten dollar fine per one you miss, so basically they're saying "If you're rich, you don't need to do this mandatory thing". It's like buying indulgences.

- They are putting $1.2 million dollar stained glass windows in the new chapel, but the new media facilities we were promised were scrapped almost entirely. This isn't hearsay; they have stated the cost of the new windows repeatedly, including in chapels. As a consolation prize, they gave the audio and video departments a little bit of money to improve the already existing facilities, AKA the recording studio that isn't soundproof and the film department without a proper soundstage. The science department facilities are also deplorable, though I can't speak to specifics as I am not in that department.

- The "student contract" is hilariously misguided. Telling students over the age of 21 they can't have a single beer off campus is insane. Do you know how ridiculous it feels to turn down a drink when your PASTOR offers you one? It's not a university's place to punish their students. If the quality of the spiritual content at the university improved, it would naturally attract students with morals the school agrees with.

I've given Cornerstone every benefit of the doubt. I was a leader in their "Terra Firma" program, I was an RA, and I've met with the school leaders about the issues I see on several occasions. They consistently have let me down and done inane, nonsensical things to distance me from the school. When people ask where I go to school, I CRINGE when they ask whether they should send their kid there, because I have to be the one to say "No, don't waste your money, if I could do it again I absolutely would not have gone to CU." This is not an indictment of the church. I love the Body of Christ, I love my local church, I love God, and I think Cornerstone is doing a terrible job of representing Christ to the world.

Cornerstone gets two stars instead of one because of a handful of the professors. To name a couple, I was educated exceptionally by Randy Miller and Pete Muir of the Media department, and Doug Mohrmann and Andy Smith of the Bible department.