I’ve been out in the “real world” for two years now and I’m noticing a trend. Little by little these PCC scandals are surfacing. I heard rumors of things like this while I attended Pensacola Christian College but never had the desire to dig deeper. No, not because I was brainwashed. It was because I didn’t care to spend my limited free time being sucked into reading a “he said she said” forum. I care to now.
Some of the articles I read online about PCC are just laughable. I literally sit and laugh out loud. I find myself thinking how ridiculous they are and how something like that could never happen at my Alma Matter. Some of the comments, blogs, or articles are clearly full of lies. I place those in the laughable category. On the other hand, some of them actually have merit.
I’m not too proud or too brainwashed to admit that there are issues. I won’t pretend like there was never a time a sweet girl on my floor got kicked out and we didn’t understand why. I won’t pretend like I never saw students sobbing as they left the student life floor. I won’t stand behind all of their rules and I won’t act as if I never wondered if leadership truly cared about us. But I also won’t ignore the fact that there are two sides to every story.
A friend and I joked one day at lunch how there were PCC Gestapo watching us. That’s all it was. A joke. Were there people watching us? Of course! There were chaperones everywhere and probably power hungry students waiting in the bushes to pounce on a senior like myself and drag my name through the mud and straight to student life. I did my time in student life, I faced the deans. I got demerits and had stand offs with the power hungry. I also broke the rules.
Of course I felt like I had to always look over my shoulder, I knew good and well that 90% of the time my skirt was borderline too short so I was paranoid about getting caught. That’s not from any kind of mental abuse I endured it’s just simple knowledge of right, wrong, and consequences. If I didn’t like feeling that way I could have a.) Bought longer skirts or b.) Left the college and attended somewhere with a less strict dress code. I chose to live on the edge and deal with the occasional 5 demerits that were going to go away at the end of the semester any way. I’m not condoning breaking rules, I’m just being honest about the choice I made.
To the best of my knowledge, PCC has never forced a student (that didn’t sign a binding work contract) to stay. People make PCC out to be some kind of abusive cult but some fail to realize that they could leave at any time but chose to stay. I’m not into politics or drama and I’m sure that some people do have negative issues in their life from their time at PCC for whatever reason. Maybe they felt like they couldn’t go home or that PCC was their only option for college. Who knows. The point is, there is nobody at the gate keeping students from going home or attending a college better suited for them.
During my time at PCC I dealt with a radical roommate who was so crazy that I had to change rooms for my own protection. Those in leadership didn’t take it serious until I told them they could find me in a different room after lights out and if they wanted to give me demerits that was fine by me. They allowed me to permanently change rooms immediately.
I later received a call slip to see the dean where I was offered the opportunity to become a floor leader. I told her the kind of lenient floor leader I would be and needless to say, I didn’t get the job.
I went home to be in my brother’s wedding which happened to fall on a fine arts weekend. I had to make up the fine arts by watching a super old video of a fine arts performance in the student life office. When I returned from the wedding, there was some kind of mix up with the paperwork and I got a call slip to student life for missing fine arts. I knew I had done nothing wrong and didn’t want to have to go and plead my case. I called my dad, he called student life, and after speaking strongly to them, everything was taken care of and I didn’t have to go before the dean.
I was accused of cheating because a friend and I got tutoring from the same upperclassman and learned how to do something in a project that nobody else in the class knew how to do. Since we were the only two that knew, the teacher decided we must have cheated and gave us both failing grades. He was actually nice about it though and when we met with him and explained, he raised our grades to passing. That wasn’t good enough for my fire ball self so I went to see the dean. She chewed me up, spit me out, and said if I were her student I would get a zero. My plan totally backfired and me and my barely passing grade left with our tails tucked.
I don’t say all that to bad mouth my college. That’s the last thing I want to do! My reason for sharing my experiences is to prove that I dealt with ridiculous circumstances and still had the time of my life at PCC! Ridiculous events happen because the college is run by imperfect humans. It’s impossible for them to avoid these things happening from time to time.
I also want to show that I was allowed to stand up for myself and give my opinion with no punishment. I still got my degree, had fun, made friends, met my husband, and enjoy going back to visit every chance I get! At the time, those negative experiences were annoying, I’ll admit that I complained and tears were shed but I got over it and will recommend the college to anyone. Unfair circumstances are everywhere and will always be everywhere. I chose to learn that lesson from my time at PCC, apply it to my life outside of college, and thrive.