Massive email sale makes students question Liberty’s motives.

In a world where personal information is just a few keystrokes away, privacy is priceless. But Liberty University just compromised their students’ digital peace and quiet for a few dollars.

According to an article by the News & Advance, Liberty University recently leased an unknown number of student and alumni email addresses to Republican Corey Stewart, who is running for U.S. Senate. Students’ university email addresses were leased to the campaign for a total of $9,754.80. Students have reported getting multiple emails from the Stewart campaign.

Liberty University has severely compromised their integrity by selling students’ personal information to political candidates. Is their students’ privacy worth so little that Liberty thinks it is acceptable to offer that information to any candidate willing to shell out some cash?

People come to college for an education, not to get bombarded by political spam. Liberty selling the email address information of their students seems to show a lack of respect for the student body. The fact that the candidates buying this information seem to all be Republicans, according to the article, is also problematic.

Liberty has always leaned right-wing conservative, and inundating their students with email after email exclusively from Republican candidates only promotes a biased, divisive agenda.

It seems that Liberty has stooped to a new low. According to the News & Advance article, Liberty is the only private university that has sold their students’ personal information to political campaigns. Other private (non-Christian) colleges in the area said that selling the email addresses of their students would be ethically problematic. Several secular universities agree that selling students’ email information to political candidates is ethically and morally wrong.

Liberty needs to take a hard look at itself and reevaluate its priorities. Secular universities are setting a higher standard for the treatment of their students’ privacy than Liberty, a place that espouses morals and a Christian worldview.

Liberty should be the one setting an example for the world. It should be the one taking the moral high ground when it comes to politics, but instead they have chosen to favor money over their students’ privacy and their own integrity.

To quote Jerry Falwell Jr.’s defense from the article, “Most emails I get are spam. That’s the world we live in.”

Just because we live in that kind of society does not mean we should take part in it. Christianity is all about living for Christ and setting a positive example to show God’s love for others. Yet Liberty has crossed a moral line – a line that secular universities would not even consider crossing.

This may seem like a small thing. After all, what’s one more piece of spam mail? But a Christian school should have enough integrity to respect their students by protecting their privacy. Its first objective should be to follow Christ’s example, rather than focus on making money and promoting a divisive political agenda.

If Liberty does not recognize that selling their students’ personal information is problematic, maybe they need to reevaluate their priorities. Because right now, they are setting an example for private universities everywhere , and it is not a Christlike example.