Openly gay freshman Isaiah Thomas has discovered Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., is not quite a good fit.
According to PennLive, the student has been through hell at the Christian College — from having his wallet, room key and student ID stolen just a month after school started to having a professor call him “an abomination” in class, to receiving a death threat on his Facebook page.
Isaiah has decided to transfer at the end of the semester.
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The Christian College requires all students to sign a “Community Covenant” which forbids homosexual behavior, according to school provost Randy Bassinger. He also claimed the school had a very strict harassment policy and has investigated the claims from Isaiah, but they refuse to release the results of any of those findings.
What we find most interesting about Isaiah though is not that he was harassed and is leaving, but he actively worked to change the school’s policies.
He is the secretary of the multicultural council, a member of the black student union and by invitation, vice president of the Middle Eastern Student Association. And when Isaiah learned about the Covenant, he actively worked for more inclusion, but each teacher he spoke to defended the covenant.
“Our covenant is quite clear on the behavioral expectations in a number of areas, one of them being homosexual behavior,” Bassinger said. “We’re very committed to that and very intentional on how we apply that — consistently, as with all our behavioral expectations.”
