Well, I’m on Fall Break right now, the family’s all gone to bed, and I’m stuck on a college sleep schedule in a time zone one hour ahead of my norm. I was finally able to look deeper into the issue between Belmont and the Tennessee Baptist Convention. Perhaps I don’t understand the finer intricacies, but it seems to me that a shareholder commanding 3% of a company’s stocks can hardly demand a right to 100% of the trustee positions. But that’s just what the TBC does. They provide about 3% of Belmont’s financing, and are gettin’ all hot and bothered over a proposal issued by Belmont to have 60% Baptist trustees and 40% non-Baptist (but still Christian) trustees on the Board.
The funny thing is a letter to the editor in the Tennessee Baptist Convention’s weekly paper–Baptist & Reflector–bids good riddance to Belmont. As if it’s all Belmont’s loss. As if Belmont misses out on the TBC’s whopping 3% and can’t more than make up for it with contributions from donors that have been reluctant to donate as long as we’re controlled by the TBC. The letter to the editor reads like it’s all to the TBC’s benefit, since of course pulling funding from Belmont would mean increased funding for the two remaining Tennessee Baptist colleges, Carson-Newman and Union. But I suppose the author of this letter, Kevin Shrum, would say that. He’d be thrilled to see more money go to Union. That’ll give him and everyone else on Union’s Board of Trustees more to play with.
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