by youngterrier on Sat Feb 03, 2018 7:48 pm
I'm not going to go into a political diatribe, but some thought on the above few posts:
1) NGU may not be a party school, but that's partially because it's a commuter school. They party in the boonies.
2) Wofford may be a liberal arts school, but the term is void of context. There's not been much change in the demographic recruitment of students (there has been some, but not earth-shaking) since 57% of the polled student body voted for Romney in 2012 (I think they did a straw poll for 2016 and the results were pretty similar). If you know anything about the trends of how young people vote, that is earth-shakingly conservative relative to other institutions.
3) There are at least 3 campus ministries at Wofford that draw 25+ people for weekly fellowship. Outside of Campus Union and Greek Life, that's unheard of.
Summary of point 2 and 3: Anyone who thinks Wofford isn't a culturally conservative and Christian friendly campus on the student side just hasn't been paying attention. Though it's true the faculty are predominately liberal, that's par the course for today's higher education. I'd argue Wofford is better than the average, or even the liberal arts average. The conservative faculty aren't shy.
As I said in a previous comment: some of y'all just don't understand how people From Greenville, Spartanburg, Union and Cherokee County think. I'm not going to knock NGU. It's a good school that does what it aims to do. Having said that, the sticker price of Wofford is like 175% of what the median household of these counties make a year. Put simply, part of the reason why there's not the same connection to Wofford as with other local universities is because we cast a wide (and not very dense) net in the southeast to convince about 400 students each year to come to Wofford. Our target student is not Spartanburg county and I don't think it ever has been. I'm not going to list the core competencies as a university, but theological (not to be confused with religious studies) education is not one of them. There are more students in any given senior biology class than there are Religious Studies majors.
North Greenville doesn't do that. They target upstate kids, not as academically rigorous, more religious kids more commuters, etc etc.
The consequence is you have any given kid in these counties know a dozen people who went to NGU, and 2-3 at bear maximum who went to Wofford. Of the 5% or so of students who could it cut at Wofford academically, the sticker price deters them from even applying.
There are far-reaching consequences for this in the immediate future and long term, but I wouldn't say it's a threat quite yet. Either way, I think a better way of understanding why this kid didn't pick us is because we clearly went after him *after* we lost another linebacker. We clearly sent the message that he was not our first choice, while NGU had been with him for a while. Anyone who's recruited anyone, whether it be Greek Life or otherwise could tell you that it's hard to beat someone's preference when you arrive late, give them the impression that you're not as important, while someone else has been doing the opposite.
Study hard, Work Hard, Party Hard, Go Terriers!