Former trustee says ‘deceptive process’ behind Davidson vote
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, April 20, 2005
Davidson College’s trustees were led through a “deceptive process” before they voted to open membership on the board to non-Christians, says Stephen B. Smith of Dallas, a multi-million-dollar contributor and an opponent of the decision.
Smith, who made a contribution of $2 million to the Davidson endowment in 2003, resigned as a trustee after the board voted in February to allow up to 20 percent of the trustees to be non-Christians.
Stephen P. Smith, left, donned a football helmet given to him by Davidson President Bobby Vagt in September 2003. The occasion was the halftime of a Davidson football game when Smith was honored for a $2 million gift to the Davidson College endowment. Smith, managing director of Bear Stearns in Dallas, was the second leading rusher in the college’s history.
Davidson College photo He said trustees were not provided information that could have raised their concerns about the proposed 20-percent rule and that they were led to believe that non-Christian governance was consistent with Reformed faith.
He was particularly dismayed that college officials did not distribute to the board letters written by Davidson alumni in response to the proposal. He said he raised a question about the letters during the debate before the vote. A spiral binder titled “Alumni Letters to Davidson College Trustees, Dec. 14, 2004 – Feb. 3, 2005” was given to him (and him alone) while the debate continued. He did not have a chance to read them.
Later, he said he spent more than three hours reading the letters and came to the conclusion that if the full board had read them it might not have opened the board’s membership to non-Christians for the first time in the school’s 168-year history.
“This was the ‘last straw’ in a series of events in a deceptive process surrounding this action that, in large part, caused me to resign from the board,” said Smith, the managing director of Bear Stearns in Dallas.
“The letters were received by the president’s office before the vote but were not shared with the trustees before the vote,” Smith said.
The Layman Online received copies of the 119 letters in a spiral binder. The person who sent the letters to The Layman Online did not disclose his/her name.
More than 60 percent of the letters were written by alumni who opposed the 20-percent rule and expressed concern about diluting Davidson’s Christian roots. Fewer than 40 percent of the alumni wrote to inform the board that they supported the action – some even urging that the college eventually end all of its Christian ties. Eight alumni wrote letters that seemed not to express a clear opinion on the issue.
Many of the supportive letters were a single paragraph – simply commending the ad hoc trustee committee for the work it had done and endorsing the 20-percent rule. The opponents of the change wrote detailed theological critiques and expressed their concern about the college’s further departure from its Christian foundation.
Davidson College was established in 1837 by Presbyterians. The bylaws still require that many of the trustees be Presbyterians.
Smith, a graduate of Davidson College, was one of two trustees who resigned from the board after its vote. The other was John M. Belk of Charlotte, one of the city’s leading citizens and former chairman of the Belk family’s department store chain. Belk has been the leading benefactor in Davidson College’s history.
Belk’s most recent pledge was $28 million in 1995. Belk says he will fulfill that pledge but make no additional contributions. Belk family members had attended Davidson College since its early days.
A native of Camilla, Ga., Smith played running back and defensive back for the Wildcat football team during his four years at Davidson, and received numerous athletic and academic honors. As an economics major at Davidson, Smith was a member of Omicron Delta Kappa honor society. As a junior, Smith set school rushing records for both single game and season, and his 761 yards led the Southern Conference in 1964. He was twice named to the Southern Conference All-Academic team, as well as second team All-Southern his senior year. He was an Honorable Mention Academic All-American as a senior, and finished his career second on Davidson’s career rushing list with 1,234 yards.
During his senior year at Davidson, Smith received a NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship to Stanford University where he earned an M.B.A. in 1968. He has had a successful career in finance, with experience in several national firms including CSFirst Boston and Lehman Brothers.
In 1992, Davidson College recognized Smith with the James P. Hendrix Award, which honors former football players who achieve distinction in their profession after leaving college. In addition to his service as college trustee, Smith has served as chair of Davidson’s Board of Visitors, as director of the Alumni Association board, and as president of the Dallas chapter of the Alumni Association. Smith received the Davidson College Alumni Service Award in 2001.
Smith has been a long-time and generous supporter of Davidson athletics, and in 2000, the college named the athletic field in its Richardson Stadium as the Stephen B. Smith Field.
The “deceptive process” that Smith complained about included, according to some observers, attempts by the school’s leaders to suggest that the late John Haddon Leith, a leading Reformed theologian, would have endorsed the 20-percent rule.
Thomas R. Ross, a trustee and chairman of the ad hoc committee that proposed the changes, brought up the Leith connection in a letter to Davidson alumni. “Following engagement with the writings of Karl Barth and John Leith, we affirmed what we believe is the Reformed Tradition’s openness to other religious heritage, by granting access to board membership to those who are not Christians, as well as committed Christians who are not active members of a Christian church, but who will pledge to support the Statement of Purpose.”
But Leith would have opposed the change, according to his daughter and a Presbyterian minister whose letters criticizing Ross’ statement were published in the March issue of The Layman.
“My dad would never have approved of the appointment of non-Christians to the Davidson College board of trustees,” said Caroline Leith, an elder at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Va. “It blows my mind to think that somehow my father’s name has been used, and the meaning of his writings misconstrued to fit the needs of this board.”
She added, “When I was younger, I heard the dissatisfaction and the sadness he felt when Davidson’s (then) board made the decision to change the Bible department to the Department of Religion. If he did not approve of this measure, how in the world can anyone think that he would have approved of the board’s latest decision, which somehow is in line with dad’s Reformed thinking?”
The Rev. Dr. James C. Goodloe, pastor of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, is one of three ministers whom Leith asked to oversee the continuing publication of his books after his death and an officer of the Foundation for Reformed Theology that Leith established.
“Nothing that John Leith ever wrote or said could possibly be construed to support turning over any portion of the governance of a Christian college to those who are not Christian,” Goodloe said in a letter to Ross. “If anyone told you that, you have been very sadly misinformed, unintentionally or otherwise. Anyone who suggested that to you should have known better.
“For instance, even the chapter of his book, Basic Christian Doctrine, having to do with ‘Christian Faith and Living Religions,’ particularly in its subsection, ‘Inclusive and Exclusive,’ deals with the power and freedom of God to work beyond the bounds of the institutional church. It does not have to do with Christians abdicating their own responsibility for the governance … I have heard him say many times that the way to have a Christian school is to have committed, church-going Christians teaching in the school. I am confident that he understood the same to apply to the administration and governance of the school.”
Ross later apologized to Caroline Leith and Goodloe, saying it was not his intention to suggest that John Haddon Leith would have favored the change.
But Smith and others said that Ross’ letter caused most alumni readers to infer that Leith would have supported non-Christian governance of the school. Smith, a member of a Presbyterian Church in America congregation, said he contacted six Presbyterian ministers and asked them if Reformed theology would accept non-Christian governance as a positive for a private, church-related school. He said he was assured that it wouldn’t.
Smith said he believes the change in the bylaws will have a damaging impact on Davidson’s fundraising and continued efforts to shore up its reputation as one of the leading academic institutions in the nation, or, as Davidson’s promoters like to say, the “Princeton of the South.”
He said he was disappointed that the trustees didn’t have the chance to make a more careful assessment of the proposal.
“It was sort of like a jury sitting there saying we’ve already made up our minds so don’t confuse us with the facts,” he said.
Smith placed some of the blame for the “deceptive process” on Davidson President Bobby Vagt, an ordained Presbyterian minister who has never served as a pastor. Vagt, a Davidson graduate with a master of divinity degree from Duke University, became Davidson’s 16th president in 1997.
During his inauguration, he declared that Davidson’s heritage “is a Christian tradition which recognizes a God who is bound by neither church nor creed; and, thus, we are blessed to have as full members of this community those of all religious beliefs.”
Some of that language – “a God who is bound by neither church nor creed” – was incorporated into the campaign to open the board to non-Christian trustees.
Before becoming president of Davidson College, Vagt served as chairman, president and chief executive officer of Seagull Energy Corporation.