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[footage from upcoming show]
CAMILLA CARR (voice of): Is a Maryland task force discriminating against religious cults on state campuses? Plus, improving students’ reading skills and loosening the cork on Maryland’s wine industry.
ANNOUNCER: This is "Newsnight Maryland"
BOB ALTHAGE: Good evening. Religious persecution or student protection? Members of two religious groups have filed a lawsuit against the state task force accusing it of violating their constitutional rights.
CAMILLA CARR: This task force was set up to study cults on Maryland campuses.
CAMILLA CARR (voiceover): In its final report the recommended that colleges compile complaints about cults, make unsponsored groups register, and produce annual reports about the organizations.
CAMILLA CARR (on camera): Tonight we’re going to hear from both sides of this issue. But as "Newsnight Maryland" correspondent Yolanda Vazquez reports in tonight’s "Maryland Life", defining a cult is a big part of the controversy.
[NOTE: VO=Voiceover of Yolanda Vazquez]
[title--"Freedom of Religion?"; footage of "First Look" fair on campus with tables set up]
YOUNG MAN WORKING AT ONE OF THE TABLES: Hi, how are you doing?
YOUNG WOMAN STUDENT WRITING SOMETHING DOWN ON WHAT LOOKS LIKE SIGN UP SHEET: Fine, how are you?
YOUNG MAN: Are you interested in ACLU on campus?
YOUNG WOMAN: Maybe.
ANOTHER WOMAN GIVING A SPEECH: We do shows every Friday--hello!--every Friday at 1 p.m. right behind you at the steps of McKeldin.
ANOTHER YOUNG MAN WITH THE WOMAN: It’s for you.
WOMAN GIVING SPEECH: And it’s for you--yes, you!
[more footage from the fair]
VO: To help students get a closer look at the more than 100 groups on campus, the University of Maryland College Park has put together a First Look Fair.
YOUNG WOMAN: Is it kind of like -----, anything like that?
VO: Some groups try to entice students with food and/or freebies. But you wouldn’t consider this kind of behavior cult-like--or would you?
[Yolanda Vazquez just out of camera range interviewing several students]
VO:You think there are many cults here on campus at the University of Maryland?
ANDREA SWIFT (caption--"Andrea Swift, student"): I’m sure there are plenty.
VO: Really? Have you heard stories about it?
ANDREA SWIFT: I’ve heard stories about it but I’ve never been approached. I know some of my friends have.
VO: When you think of cults, what kind of groups do you think of?
JENNIFER PRELOVSKY (caption--"Jennifer Prelovsky, student"): Um, Aum Ring Kyo, and, yeah, Heaven’s Gate.
VO: Do you think all cults are bad?
FAZELL ISLAM (caption--"Fazell Islam, student"): Probably not. The majority of them, probably no. They’re misunderstood, they’re a new group. Some of them, I mean--the majority of them probably just have different views.
ROCKMAN CULVER (caption--"Rockman Culver, student"): I mean, "cult" has a negative connotation to it already. Some groups that may not be considered mainstream I don’t think are bad. I wouldn’t call them a cult.
[Warren Kelley working at his desk]
VO: The problem with determining which groups could be considered cults lies in the very definition of the word, says student affairs executive assistant Warren Kelley
WARREN KELLEY: Once you get down to actually trying to define what is a cult, it becomes very problematic to put boundaries around it in ways in which people can agree. I, in my review of this issue, have not come across any kind of widely accepted definition of a cult.
[pages from report from task force; footage inside classroom, more pages from the task force report with close-up of the word "cult activities"]
VO: Nor did a task force that was put together by the Maryland general assembly. Its goal was to study the effects of cult activities on campuses within the University of Maryland system. In their final report the task force offered a few recommendations, but they never defined the term "cult", nor did they name any specific groups.
WILLIAM STUART (caption--"William Stuart, anthropology professor"): At the outset, "cult" is something is almost never something you call oneself or one’s group, so it’s a term you call somebody else and it carries with it negative connotations.
[pages from task force report; William Stuart speaking in classroom and sitting at desk; shot of a stack of books about cults]
VO: Right from the very beginning, Professor William Stuart took offense to the task force’s use of the term "cult", saying it was prejudicial. Stuart, who teaches a course on social movements, says what a lot of people fail to remember is that many of today’s religions once started out as cults.
WILLIAM STUART: And they were called something similarly pejorative and dismissive by their critics at that time--Christianity, for instance.
[another shot of stack of books about cults; William Stuart sitting in an office with Yolanda Vazquez; more footage of the First Look Fair]
VO: Professor Stuart says he does know some students who are involved in different kinds of movements but he hasn’t seen any destructive tendencies on behalf of those groups.
WILLIAM STUART: There are literally hundreds by the thousands of students that are involved in one kind of social or religious movement on campus. The numbers who complain are very, very, very small.
[close-up of pamphlet titled "Friends Are Everywhere"]
YOLANDA VAZQUEZ (on camera and voice of): Throughout the campus you’ll find small pamphlets like these that serve as a guide of sorts to helping students make decisions about which groups they should be involved in. While literature like this is informative, many agree the decision to join--or not to join--is ultimately up to the student.
[more footage from First Look Fair]
WILLIAM STUART (voice of): Students come here and they are adults and for the most part are savvy people. They are able to think about making decisions in their own life and they make choices. And they need to be convinced by someone that doing something is a useful thing for them.
VO: So if someone were to approach you and you didn’t want to get involved with the organization, what would you say to them?
ANDREA SWIFT: "I’m simply not interested."
VO: Even if they were very aggressive?
ANDREA SWIFT: Yes. "I’m just simply not interested."
[more footage from First Look Fair; aerial shot of University of Maryland campus]
VO: The University of Maryland College Park says it’s fully prepared to deal with any cult-like activities that may exist on campus, but with a student population of 32,000, it’s hard to monitor every nook and cranny. In College Park, Yolanda Vazquez, "Newsnight Maryland".
CAMILLA CARR: And in the studio now are Ron Loomis from the American Family Foundation, that’s a research and education organization; Bill Stuart, University of Maryland--he’s in our story; Denny Gulick from the University of Maryland, also a professor, and Dan Fefferman from the International Coalition for Religious Freedom. And as always you can join our discussion; the number will be at the bottom of the screen. Denny, what prompted this task force?
DENNY GULICK (caption--"Denny Gulick, University of Maryland, College Park"): There were a couple of parents whose children had been coaxed into groups that they thought had harmed their children, and they felt that it would be really important for students who go to the campuses in the state to be able to be aware of the kinds of behaviors of some groups that operate on the various campuses in, you know, the institutions.
CAMILLA CARR: Was that the only reason or what--
DENNY GULICK: So they went--they went to the legislators and the legislators listened and thought that they had a real message.
CAMILLA CARR: What about--did the Heaven’s Gate massacre play, out in California, play into this or--
DENNY GULICK: I don’t think so, no. People know about that, it did raise the level of consciousness about certain groups, however.
CAMILLA CARR: Well, as Yolanda pointed out, one of the problems with this issue is defining what a cult is. Bill, you care to take a stab at that?
BILL STUART (caption, "William Stuart, Ph.D., University of Maryland, College Park": Well, I think as already mentioned, "cult" is something you tend to call somebody else, somebody else’s group. It’s typically new, it’s often small, it’s strange and it’s other. And I think for that reason it is often quite misunderstood. And where one has misunderstanding the not surprising result often is fear and hostility.
CAMILLA CARR: Ron?
RON LOOMIS (caption--"Ron Loomis, American Family Foundation"): I don’t have a problem defining cults at all. A totalistic cult is a group or a movement exhibiting excessive dedication to some person, idea, or thing, and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control designed to advance the goals of the group’s leaders but in actuality are detrimental to the members, their families, and the larger society. You notice the focus is on the harm caused by the techniques that the groups use.
CAMILLA CARR: Dan, your group has filed a lawsuit against the task force, and you claim religious persecution. Explain your point, please.
DAN FEFFERMAN: Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it persecution, but, you, know, I think that--
CAMILLA CARR: Excuse me, religious discrimination--
DAN FEFFERMAN (caption--"Dan Fefferman, International Coalition for Religious Freedom"): Right. You know, if Mr. Loomis wants to define the word "cult" the way that he wants to, I don’t have a problem with that or his organization. The problem comes is when the state starts using the term "cult", because that is a pejorative term and it tends to discriminate and, and to favor certain religions against more established religions, and that’s why we have the First Amendment and the principle of separation of church and state.
CAMILLA CARR: But I think--let’s try to move beyond semantics here, and I think, Denny, you mentioned that there were a couple of parents who had complained that their kids got involved in cults while on campus. And Ron, you have had some experience with people who have been involved with cults?
RON LOOMIS: Absolutely. Having done this cult awareness educational work for about 25 years, by now I have met hundreds of former cult members, and know from their descriptions how significantly they have been harmed. I think what we need to focus on, however, is the fact that the task force report recommends education and different ways in which students can be given information about the techniques that groups will use. Not just religious groups--there are many harmful groups that are not religious. So the focus of the task force has been on education; they have never discussed religion.
CAMILLA CARR: Bill, you called it prejudicial.
BILL STUART: I think, you know--yes, I did so and I did so primarily because it seems to me that the literature that is available now that is used on campus--some of it was shown on the earlier segment--is, is prejudicial, it’s biased, and it’s from one perspective. I would agree with Mr. Loomis that education is certainly a great part of the answer. What I would certainly hope that the university, that the boards of regents, and so on, would move to have more balanced information about new religious and social movements, and the first place to start is to drop the word "cult"; it is prejudicial and offensive.
DENNY GULICK:Can I--can I say something?
CAMILLA CARR: Denny?
DENNY GULICK: I’d like to say something about that brochure. That brochure was prepared by people from the legal office, people from, uh, the religious community and also people who were neither; there were professors as well. There is no mention of the word "cult". There’s only mention of groups and their behaviors; it’s not prejudicial. If it had been, had the slightest wink of prejudice, then it would never have existed and would not be used.
CAMILLA CARR: Dan, I want to just clarify a point, and that is, who is involved in this lawsuit? When I said it’s your group, but it’s the Seventh Day Adventists, correct? And the Unification Church--
DAN FEFFERMAN: Um, it’s primarily members of the Unification Church. My organization is the International Coalition for Religious Freedom, and it’s also involved in the suit. It receives its funding primarily from the Unification Church. There are also members of Seventh Day Adventist Church involved in the suit.
CAMILLA CARR: Well, I think--
DENNY GULICK: But not the church itself. The Seventh Day Adventist Church was not involved. But--and I think, Dan, you said earlier that the Unification Church itself wasn’t involved, but simply these were members of the coalition that prepared that suit. Is that correct?
DAN FEFFERMAN: Members of the coalition, individuals who are not members of the coalition, and the coalition itself as an organization was the plaintiff.
CAMILLA CARR: Well--go ahead, Bill.
BILL STUART: I’d like to return this, if I could to your original question on how this thing got started, and I think it that bears on Professor Gulick’s point and Dan’s as well. In particular, the testimony before the legislature was highly skewed. By some accident--we needn’t go into just what the grounds were--I was invited, virtually the only person who contributed anything of a more even-handed and balanced, much less scholarly, account of what new social and religious movements are about. Again, probably the key is education, but let’s keep it honest and let’s keep it balanced.
CAMILLA CARR: Denny?
DENNY GULICK: Yes?
CAMILLA CARR: What do you think about that? Do you think it--do you think it was skewed, the testimony before the--
DENNY: Well, if peop--
RON LOOMIS: He’s talking about the testimony before the legislature that created the task force--
CAMILLA CARR: Created the task force, right--
RON LOOMIS: Let’s focus on the recommendations that came out of the task force, which are very fair and which revolve around education.
CAMILLA CARR (referring to Denny Gulick and Ron Loomis): Okay, you think they’re fair, you think they’re fair--gentlemen, do you think those recommendations are fair--
DAN FEFFERMAN: Well, I think--
CAMILLA CARR: --about, you know, requiring groups to register with camp--with, with the university?
DAN FEFFERMAN: A lot of it depends on how they’re carried out. I don’t think some of them are necessary. I don’t think it’s necessary for there to be some kind of a repository for complaints that can be viewed by the public. I don’t think it’s necessary to have a yearly report, go to all that trouble. There are already campus police to deal with actual harassment complaints, and there are deans of student affairs to deal with complaints about how organizations are run. No, I think pretty much it was unnecessary, and it could really create a chilling effect on religious freedom.
DENNY GULICK: It--well, I disagree totally. It has nothing to do with religion at all. The proposals in the report say nothing about religion, and it’s only if you choose to think that they do, that they do. Now, as for the administration, generally administrations have pretended that nothing has occurred. We’ve heard this from almost all the campuses. It is a fact that destructive groups are operating on virtually every urban institution in America and also in this state. We have chapter and verse on these, and we think that the students ought to be able to be aware of some kinds of behaviors without naming any names.
CAMILLA CARR: I think the point was made in our story, though, that are students that gullible?
DAN FEFFERMAN: Well students are--
DENNY GULICK:Yes--
DAN FEFFERMAN: --adults in the first place. They don’t need their mommies and daddies or the university to tell them what religion or other group they should join. They have an absolute right of freedom of association and they don’t need the university to tell them which groups are okay and which groups are not okay.
DENNY GULICK: Nobody has ever suggested that they would.
RON LOOMIS: It doesn’t have to do with gullibility. The techniques that these groups use to recruit students are highly sophisticated, very manipulative, and very--highly intelligent adults have difficulty recognizing them. We’re focusing on cults that work on college and university campuses. There’s another whole category of cults that deal with older adults--people in their 30’s and 40’s and 50’s--who cannot recognize the techniques that have being, that are being used on them, they are that sophisticated.
BILL STUART: I might mention, if I could, to interrupt here, that indeed the evidence for any kind of degree of manipulative techniques of an abusive nature being used by these unnamed groups--and I think that’s part of the problem, is that they don’t have names so it’s hard to know what you’re talking about--but these groups are, and the, what they are accused of have virtually no dispassionate confirmation. What you get instead is this highly coached assessments by apostate members of these movements. Again, take seriously the ex-member’s testimony, but don’t take it at face value.
CAMILLA CARR: Let’s go to the phones. We have a phone call from Ariel in Prince George’s County. Good evening.
[caption on bottom of screen--"On The Phone: Ariel, Prince George’s County"]
ARIEL: Good evening.
CAMILLA CARR:Yes, you have a question or comment?
ARIEL: Yeah, I was--I’m a member of Wicca, and I was concerned about one of the professor’s statements about determining the amount of harm that was being done to people in these cults. Who decides what amount of harm is being done and who decides what it is?
CAMILLA CARR: Ron, Denny?
DENNY GULICK: I don’t think anybody determines what is, and that isn’t our goal. Our goal--I’ve been talking about this for 15 years--is to try and let people know what some groups, how some groups behave towards their members. That’s the whole goal. And we’re not accusing groups, and we’re not assessing them, and we shouldn’t be doing that.
BILL STUART: I guess I’m concerned about giving--what you’re giving to us with one hand, Denny, and taking away with another. On the one hand, you assert that there are these groups, but you don’t name them so it’s very difficult to know what we’re talking about, much less the magnitude of, of the problem.
CAMILLA CARR: What is the magnitude of the problem?
RON LOOMIS: Well, one of the findings of the task force is, although the number of students who are adversely affected by cults is not great, the extent to which that small number of students is adversely affected is very significant, and they site in their report a number of cases of individual students who have described the ways in which they were harmed. And in response to Ariel, by the way, it is up to the individual and their families to indicate whether or not they have been harmed.
DAN FEFFERMAN: You know, if you were really--if they were really in groups in general, not just religious groups, they would have focused on the fraternity hazings, which causes deaths and severe harm, binge drinking at fraternities and sororities, far-left wing groups that are calling for--
CAMILLA CARR: Well, actually, they’re--
DAN FEFFERMAN: But they were just focusing on religious groups and it’s not true that they weren’t.
CAMILLA CARR: That--well, they were focusing on, on cults, but I think--universities have traditionally been very concerned about hazing, they have looked into hazing and they have looked into binge drinking. But--
RON LOOMIS: And there are already--
CAMILLA CARR: But wait, before--
RON LOOMIS: --things in place to deal with those things.
[caption--"On The Phone: Judy, Montgomery County"]
CAMILLA CARR: Let’s go back to the phones. Judy from Montgomery County, good evening.
JUDY: I wonder if you would ask the panel about the techniques that these groups use to manipulate people and to change their life experience so dramatically and so negatively. Um, there is a long history of these groups doing these kinds of things; we’re talking about Moonies, Scientologists. And the reason probably the pamphlet doesn’t name names is because of the threat of suits from these groups. But those questions should be asked. These are mind-altering techniques that are used by these groups, and I think that the public should be aware of that.
CAMILLA CARR: Ron, do you want to just briefly talk about some of the techniques--
RON LOOMIS: Sure--
CAMILLA CARR: And then Dan, would you like to respond?
RON LOOMIS: And in fact, the task force report includes a listing of characteristics that are used by some of these destructive groups. Um, they include things like, like deception--the use of front names to mask the real identity of the group. Manipulation of guilt and fear. Um, blackmail--they will encourage people to confess some things from their past and their background that they are embarrassed about as a sort of a cathartic act, then they will use that information and threaten to reveal it to family and friends if the person doesn’t do what the group wants.
CAMILLA CARR: Dan?
DAN FEFFERMAN: Well, the main thing I can say--there are a whole litany of charges here, but one man’s manipulative techniques is another man’s authentic conversion experience, using terms like "sin" or "repentance"--that’s part of religion.
CAMILLA CARR: Bill?
BILL STUART: I’m, I’m concerned as well about the--the crypto-religious agenda that is here. We’ve heard it said repeatedly today that the people are not against religions, not seeking them out in particular. In point of fact, as evident by the calls in here as well as the examples of virtually every testimony before the legislature and before the, um--before the task force, the anti-cult testimony was, with only one exception at the task force, was about religion and exclusively about religion.
CAMILLA CARR: I guess, you know, one of the--one of the points that probably needs to be made, though, is, one, I think we’ve all agreed that cults are on campus but they’re not widespread, is that correct? But the other problem here, Denny, isn’t there a slippery slope here? Somebody pointed out here that maybe this task force is the first step down the road that some European countries have taken towards the Church of Scientology.
DENNY GULICK: One--one can say that but that isn’t what we’re advocating, that isn’t what the parents who propose this are advocating. We’re simply advocating that people be aware as they haven’t been before. And then people can join what they want to. We think that there’s a free society. And by the way--I wanna--
CAMILLA CARR: Really quickly--
DENNY GULICK: So they should be able to join whatever--whatever they want. But you know, there are thousands of new religions. Some--he says they’re called a new religion. Well, most new religions are just wonderful.
CAMILLA: Okay, Bill, we are about--we have about 20 seconds left. Would you like the final thought?
BILL STUART: Yes. It concerns me very much the atmosphere developing, of an atmosphere of prejudice, an expectation of harm that I think is incommensurable with the idea of a free university, with the free exchange of ideas.
CAMILLA CARR: Okay. Well, I’d like to thank all four of you for joining us.
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