@David81, yeah, I think that makes sense... though if I were to quibble, maybe it's just that it seems a little overly optimistic about 'values'?
It's not that students are somehow value-less and then come seeking values as some kind of clearly positive tradition. At this point, most students DO have values - but it shows up in strange ways, like in the assumption that it's more fair to turn a blind eye to one's own or one's peers' cheating than to 'snitch,' that it's more moral to do what's efficient (lift work from peers, or have chatgpt do it) than to do things the inefficient way oneself, and it's more responsible to make a lot of money for oneself than do something with lesser ROI. If the university wants to teach 'values,' it is to some extent a de-learning of values as much as it is a learning of new ones.
So I'm just kind of dim on generic 'values' talk, since there are plenty of values out there (shaped by Amazon, political headlines, credit card companies, football advertisements, and everything else under the sun) but they're not necessarily worth the endorsement of the university.
@vuindiana I'm not suggesting that the students to whom I refer are out there in droves....in fact, I don't think that has ever been that way. But as someone who teaches students of that age group + 5-10 years (i.e., law school), I know they exist, and they span the social and political and (where applicable) religious spectrum.
Furthermore, as a smaller school, VU doesn't have to attract the lion's share of that cohort; it "merely" has to attract more of them than it has been doing. (Hence, we're back to how VU's messaging affects its recruiting.)
Here, too, is where the next VU president possibly comes into the picture. Can this person's vision for the university excite prospective students about enrolling? It's asking a lot of a university president to be a draw at the retail level, especially considering that their time probably would not be well spent doing individual outreach to accepted students. But it would be quite a thing for a new VU president to have the personal qualities that excite people about being a part of something larger than themselves.
Don't know if this is any indication of chapel life for the general student population, but there is a picture on Facebook from the chapel showing chapel staff who are graduating. They total 16. It's not just a couple of pastors wandering around.
@vu72 Chapel involvement definitely increased this year. As examples, Celebrate, the Wednesday night (10 pm) service, grew from an average of 50-60 students per week at the beginning of the year to over 100 attending the last one, right before finals. Candlelight, the Sunday night (9 pm) service, also almost doubled in attendance this year.
