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          The Involvement of College Students in
    Totalistic Groups: Causes, Concerns, Legal Issues,
                and Policy Considerations

                Gregory S. Blimling, Ph.D. 

Religious activities on college campuses grew throughout 
the decade of the 1980's.  By 1984, students were 
clamoring for more religious classes at public 
universities, and were joining and attending religious 
services in record numbers (Newsweek, 1984).  Boyer 
(1987), president of the Carnegie Foundation for the 
Advancement of Teaching, confirmed this continuing 
interest in religion, observing that "religious groups are 
among the fastest-growing organizations on many campuses" 
(p. 187).  He notes further that the charismatic and 
revival groups have seen a particular increase, while 
mainstream Protestant groups have a "rather small 
following among undergraduates." (p. 188)  National 
surveys of incoming college freshmen indicate that 5.6% of 
new college freshmen in 1985 indicated that their 
religious preferences fell outside of traditional 
religious organizations (Austin, 1986).  The increase in 
religious activity, and the often controversial behavior 
of nontraditional, fundamentalist, and cult religious 
groups on college campuses, has been an issue of concern 
among college administrators (Biemiller, 1983).  This 
article addresses these issues as they apply to college 
campuses.

The article is organized into four sections.  The first 
section explores why college students are particularly 
susceptible to cult involvement.  In the second section, 
cult recruiting on campus is examined, and the problems 
associated with cult involvement are reviewed in the third 
section.  The article concludes with an examination of 
legal issues and policy considerations which educational 
administrators need to consider in working with cult 
groups and with students cults are attempting to recruit.

The term "cult" is used throughout this chapter to refer 
to a totalist religious group which dominates members' 
attention and rigidly prescribes their conduct in most of 
their daily activities.  These groups are customarily 
associated with a living, highly charismatic leader 
(Whittier, 1979), tend to have a preoccupation with the 
attainment of money (Lynn, 1979), and frequently employ 
coercive and deceptive techniques to recruit and convert 
new members (Shapiro, 1977).  A principle feature of many 
cult groups is that they isolate their members from their 
families of origin, and often from the rest of society, 
except where such association serves the interest of the 
cult: fund-raising.  Although the concept of a "religion" 
is implicit in the definition of a cult as it is used 
here, this formal designation is not a prerequisite.  Some 
highly dogmatic, pseudo-psychotherapy groups may, without 
formal association, serve the same spiritual functions as 
a religion.

  Susceptibility of College Students to Cult Involvement

It is probably true that anyone, given the right set of 
circumstances, can be converted to membership in a 
religious cult.  What is not as apparent is why some 
people are drawn to these groups while others are able to 
remain independent.  One of the methods for discovering 
why people join is to ask the question, "Who joins?"  
Research has shown (Galanter, 1979; Clark, 1976) that over 
half of all new members are in the adult transitional 
years--between 18 and 24 years old.  It is not by 
coincidence that many cult groups focus on this age 
period.  They recognize that young adults in search of 
identity are vulnerable, easily deceived, and filled with 
a certain naive idealism which can be used by cults to win 
new converts.

The common theme of the adult transitional years is the 
search and integration for identity.  Erickson (1968) was 
among the first to recognize the importance of this 
period, 18-24, as a time which one devotes to establishing 
identity.  The critical stages he observed in this period 
are the interplay between the need for intimacy with 
others versus isolation and the recognition of a 
self-identity versus role confusion.  Resolution of these 
issues involves (1) experimenting with various roles and 
lifestyles, (2) having the freedom to choose activities 
and experience the consequence of those choices, (3) 
feeling involved in what can be seen as meaningful 
achievement, and (4) having time for introspection and 
reflection.

Other researchers (Sanford, 1967; Coons, 1974; Havighurst, 
1953) have elaborated upon Erikson's observations of the 
developmental stages leading to adulthood.  These theories 
of psychological development offer insight into why young 
adults in the transitional years between childhood and 
adulthood are so susceptible to the intrusive 
proselytizing and coercive persuasion of cult groups.  An 
examination of each of these theories exceeds the scope of 
this chapter and is unnecessary to illustrate why, in this 
period of transition, young adults are so vulnerable.  
Instead, one theory, that of Chickering (1972), will be 
used to illustrate why college students, and others in 
this developmental period, are so psychologically 
susceptible to cult involvement.

Psychosocial Development: Chickering's Theory

Briefly, Chickering hypothesizes seven vectors of 
development which begin in childhood and continue 
throughout a person's life.  The first three of these 
vectors form a framework for the establishment of a 
self-concept. They consist of (1) establishing 
intellectual, physical, and social competence, (2) 
learning to recognize and manage emotions, and (3) 
developing autonomy.  These three developmental vectors 
are issues principal to the normal psychological 
maturation of students in the freshman and sophomore 
years.  It is the integration of these three vectors which 
forms the initial stages of an adult ego identity, which 
Chickering considers to be the fourth vector of 
development.  This fourth vector, identity, serves as the 
framework for the resolution of the last three vectors: 
(5) freeing of interpersonal relationships, (6) 
establishing purpose, and (7) developing integrity.  These 
latter three vectors are developmental concerns of the 
junior year of college and beyond.  All seven vectors 
continue throughout life, and form other developmental 
issues in later-life transitions (Levinson, 1978; Kegan, 
1982).

Any of these seven vectors can serve as the basis for 
unresolved crises in which a student may seek to escape 
the crises by joining a cult.  As one example, consider 
the vector of autonomy.  It is comprised of two competing 
issues: emotional independence and instrumental 
independence.  Emotional independence is characterized by 
college students in their struggle to break the 
parent-child relationship and exchange it for an 
adult-to-adult relationship.  This is inhibited in college 
students by the financial ties they have with their 
parents, who usually assume all or at least part of the 
cost for their college expenses.  Lacking the instrumental 
autonomy of financial independence inhibits the freeing of 
the parental bonds of control and accountability.  Cult 
groups offer one form of resolving this struggle for 
autonomy.  Instrumentally, they offer students financial 
independence from parents in exchange for financial 
dependence on the cult group.  Emotionally, they offer the 
student a physical break with the control and 
accountability to parents, which they exchange for the 
illusion of personal autonomy in the cult.

Even after students have established a formative identity, 
they remain vulnerable.  As students struggle to free 
their interpersonal relationships, they take greater risks 
in self-disclosure and intimacy.  General friendships are 
replaced by more intimate ones, usually focusing on a 
significant other person.  Again, when students are 
confronted with difficulty in establishing these more 
meaningful levels of emotional intimacy with others, cults 
are there to offer a replacement with their psychological 
techniques of "love bombing" and communal surrogate family 
structures. These help the student resolve the immediate 
crises, but offer only a temporary and superficial 
resolution in exchange for the person's obedience to the 
cult.


Cognitive Development: Perry's Theory

Although cults recruit principally by attacking people 
psychologically and not intellectually, the cognitive 
stage of students' development may predispose them to a 
cult's message.  Perry (1970), in his study of college 
students, has suggested that students enter college as 
dualistic reasoners and move to an acceptance of 
pluralistic reasons and finally into a state of 
relativistic reasoning.  Freshmen commonly believe that 
there are absolute rights and wrongs and that these truths 
are known to those in positions of authority, such as 
college professors.  The process of education moves 
students from this dualistic reasoning to an acceptance of 
pluralistic truths, and finally into various forms of 
relativistic reasoning in which one sees truth in the 
context of experience, evidence, credibility, and values.  
When students are confronted by ideas which cannot be 
explained using the cognitive reasoning to which they are 
accustomed, they begin a process of adapting to a new form 
of reasoning, or they escape the process of development by 
rigidly adhering to their current form of reasoning, or 
they regress to a less complex stage of reasoning.  
Confronted by an uncertain world in which truths are 
relative, some students seek the sanctuary of a cult 
group, which absolves them of decision-making and supplies 
them with a complete set of absolute truths derived from 
the dogma of the cult.  Acceptance, by faith, alleviates 
the dissonance created by the uncertainties of the world 
of relativism and offers a reassuring, albeit naive, 
reality.

Moral Development: Kohlberg's Theory

Another psychological area in which college students are 
particularly vulnerable to cult involvement concerns the 
progress of their moral development.  Kohlberg (1981) 
explains moral development as a six-stage progression from 
beliefs based on egocentric reasoning to those based on 
sociocentric reasoning, to those based on alleocentric 
reasoning.  Students enter college at either stage three 
or stage four in Kohlberg's moral stage development 
scheme.  Both of these stages employ sociocentric 
reasoning.  In stage-three moral reasoning, students are 
concerned with self as a member of the peer group.  What 
is right is determined by peer approval.  In stage-four 
reasoning, students are concerned with the self as a 
member of society.  What is right is defined by obeying 
the rules of the social order.  Anywhere in this process 
of moral growth the cults can intervene.  At stage-three 
reasoning, the appeal is the communal nature of the group 
and the peer support it offers.  At stage-four reasoning, 
the appeal of the cult is for the alleged worthiness of 
their organization--the greater good of the world--and the 
absolute laws which guide the cult's dogma.

The transition to college can be a very threatening 
experience for many students.  Often it is the first time 
that students have been absent from the family of origin 
for a prolonged time.  The identity which has sustained 
them throughout high school is shed as they enter college, 
where what one did in high school is seen as a link with 
the past and is of little interest to the other college 
students.  Most students make this transition with only 
the normal adjustment anxiety and uncertainty that 
accompany any such life change.  Other students find this 
experience to be much more threatening and frequently seek 
easy solutions to complex social adjustment problems.

Because the college years are a period of transition and 
uncertainty, students are particularly vulnerable to the 
psychological persuasion of cults.  Psychosocially, 
students are struggling with adapting to new adult roles.  
Cognitively, students are learning more complex ways to 
reason while relinquishing the safety and security of the 
adolescent and preadolescent years.  And morally, 
students' beliefs are being challenged to grow from the 
dependability and direct feedback received from peers and 
family members to a reliance on the larger social 
structure of society.  These changes, although not 
restricted to this age period of 18-24, are perhaps most 
dynamic during this period because these life changes 
represent a move from the nuclear family to independence.

Social Factors

Another way to ask the question about why students are 
joining cults is to ask, "Why are they joining now?"  Is 
there something about contemporary society which makes 
cults a more compelling option for students in the world 
today than in the past?  Toffler (1971) suggested that 
there are so many choices students must make in college 
that they may be confronted by what he called "over 
choice."  One resolution to this "over choice" in today's 
society is to stop making the choices for oneself and let 
others do it for you.  Coons (1974) suggests that this is 
one of the appeals of cults.  These groups offer an escape 
from self-determination by absolving individuals from 
having to reason for themselves.  This is replaced with 
the decisions cults make for individuals as revealed 
through the groups' dogmas.

Cox (1977) suggests that society today has failed to 
fulfill the basic human need to belong and have the 
support of the community.  As institutions have become 
more egalitarian, larger, and the faculty more specialized 
and compartmentalized, the sense of community on many 
college campuses has been lost.  Boyer (1987), in a report 
by the Carnegie Foundation on the status of American 
undergraduate education, notes that "almost two out of 
five of today's undergraduates still say they do not feel 
a sense of community at their institution (p. 191)."

In an earlier report by the Carnegie Foundation, Levine 
(1980) suggested that one reason for this lack of 
community is that students have lost faith in higher 
education and in other social institutions such as the 
church, the family, and the government because these 
institutions have failed to meet their ideals.  He 
observed that students were either abandoning traditional 
religions or were seeking new religions.  Levine explains 
this seeming paradox in this way:  "When faith or interest 
in traditional religions decline, new religions are a 
common development, particularly when trust in 
normally-competing social institutions is low.  To a 
subgroup of young people looking for something to believe 
in, non-traditional religions with an emphasis on 
community or a well-defined dogma for guidance have been 
particularly appealing" (pp. 98-99).

The combination of students in the midst of confronting 
the normal developmental issues leading to adulthood, 
college environments which are larger and less supportive 
to students, and the stress of being presented lifestyle 
options not afforded previous generations, helps to make 
college students particularly vulnerable to the recruiting 
practices of cults.  Given this combination of 
circumstances, cults find a fertile territory when they 
come to college campuses seeking students to recruit and 
convert.

           Cult Recruitment of College Students

College campuses contain high percentages of 
upper-middle-class white students who are confronting the 
normal transitional issues leading to adulthood.  Students 
generally have unscheduled leisure time and the 
opportunity to experiment with different lifestyle options 
as a method for determining what suits them.  They also 
possess the youthful enthusiasm and ideological 
commitments which become more difficult to sustain as one 
grows older and makes other life commitments.

The proliferation of cult groups on college campuses has 
been extensive.  At the University of California - 
Berkeley, for example, it is estimated that at least 200 
different religious sects on and off-campus are recruiting 
from the 30,000-student campus (Anderson, 1981).

Types of Recruiting

There are two kinds of recruiters which haunt college 
campuses.  The first is the trained cult leader sent to a 
campus for the purpose of establishing a group.  The 
second type is the zealous new member eager to share 
his/her experience in much the same way as a 
recently-sobered alcoholic has the need to share his/her 
change in lifestyle.  Recruiters are taught to look for 
students who are confronting transitional life 
experiences, who are depressed, or who are under stress or 
in crisis.  Because conversion to a cult is an attack on 
one's emotions and not one's intellect, recruiters have 
the greatest advantage when students are most vulnerable.  
Freshmen and seniors are sometimes specifically targeted, 
because both are in the midst of major life-transitional 
experiences.

Any campus location can provide an opportunity for the 
cult recruiter to make an initial contact.  Recruiters 
have been known to station themselves at university 
counseling centers to find students who are emotionally 
vulnerable (Enroth, 1979), wander the corridors of the 
residence halls to find students who are feeling lonely 
(Stoehr, 1978), and to loiter about college libraries 
looking for students whose reading topics might offer an 
opportunity to initiate a discussion that could lead to a 
continuing relationship (Bromley & Shupe, 1979).  Students 
who have recently ended a relationship with a boyfriend or 
a girlfriend make particularly good prospects.  An 
attractive male or female student can befriend the 
recently-jilted student for the purpose of gaining a new 
recruit.

One must remember that cult recruiters, both those 
specifically trained for the purpose and those who are 
simply zealous new members, are motivated by a commitment 
to the worthiness of the cult.  When they deceive, 
manipulate, or coerce another person into the steps 
leading to conversion, they do so with the unshakable 
belief that they are helping that person to become closer 
to God or to whatever other principle, deity, or 
experience they are professing.  For the cult recruiter, 
the ends do justify the means.

Students are not the only ones deceived by cult members.  
College administrators, the police, or patrons to an event 
from whom they are seeking donations are all equally 
"uninformed and naive" and are therefore assumed by cult 
members to be unable to make decisions based on the full 
knowledge of the circumstances.  Therefore, they reason, 
deception is justified.

Recruitment Methods

The three methods most commonly used to recruit on campus 
are (1) casual contact, (2) street corner evangelism, and 
(3) becoming a student organization.  The first of these, 
casual contacts, was discussed briefly above.  It involves 
canvassing the campus and locating "likely" prospects for 
the purpose of inviting the student to an initial meeting 
or weekend retreat.  The second form of recruiting is what 
I have termed "street-corner evangelism," which consists 
of "soapbox" lectures given by a cult leader.  These talks 
may address some major world crisis or the teachings of 
the cult.  In the first instance, the leader is generally 
interested in identifying students who are willing to 
commit themselves to some alleged worthy cause.  The 
recruiter's intent is to get some of the audience to 
commit to come to some form of organizational meeting or 
retreat--which in actuality is an intense recruiting 
program.  In the second instance, the recruiter explains 
the cult's mission and its "benefits" to students.  The 
Bible or "self-help" principles akin to pop-psychology are 
frequently used as the forum for this discussion.  Drawing 
from what students know about these topics, the recruiter 
extends or reinterprets passages from the Bible or 
generally accepted psychological principles as a method 
for helping students discover something of interest to 
them so they will attend more serious discussions of the 
topic.

The third form of recruiting is for a cult group to seek 
the recognition of the university as a student 
organization.  In becoming a student organization, the 
cult gains access to university facilities and may gain 
access to some student funds, forums to recruit students, 
and university mailing lists of new students.  Perhaps 
most importantly, the cult gains some legitimacy through 
the recognition procedure.  Despite the distance a 
university might wish to put between itself and the 
activities of the cult, to students and to the public, 
university recognition implies some form of acceptance or 
approval by the university community.  Because public 
universities have limited criteria by which they can deny 
recognition to groups seeking to affiliate, this 
recognition may not imply approval, but merely that the 
group has met the minimum criteria courts have established 
for recognition.

These three common recruiting methods on college campuses 
should not be viewed as mutually exclusive, or exhaustive.  
Other recruiting schemes are certainly available.  One 
with which the author is personally familiar involved an 
attempt to infiltrate the Resident Assistant staff in 
several college residence halls.  The plan was to have 
cult members hired as resident assistants and subsequently 
located in the same residence hall with other members 
living in the living units supervised by these resident 
assistants.  Gradually, through peer pressure, guilt, and 
nightly classes held in the floor lounge, members of this 
organization attempted to recruit the other members of the 
floor.  The plan was then to have these members move to 
other living units in the same building and continue the 
process floor by floor until they had converted an entire 
building.  Fortunately, the plan was circumvented in its 
initial stages by an alert residence hall staff.

One of the major problems college administrators face in 
working with these groups is discovering who the groups 
really are.  Many practice deception: they are not 
reluctant to cloak the actual name of the cult by using 
organizational names not known to the public.

The greatest threat faced by students is not from 
recruiters exposing their beliefs.  College campuses 
should offer a forum for the exchange of ideas regardless 
of how unorthodox a set of beliefs might be.  The threat 
to students is the unprincipled, psychologically-coercive 
behavior which accompanies many of these recruiting 
efforts.  Many students join these groups because of 
deception.  It is these recruiting behaviors which 
university administrators must restrict.

         Problems Associated with Cults on Campus

Unlike many campus religious groups whose mission is to 
support the spiritual life of students and assist them in 
their college endeavors, cult groups seek students to 
assist only the cult organization.  As students become 
drawn into the cult, they are gradually separated from the 
college until their life is so consumed with the daily 
requirements of the cult that important academic work goes 
unattended, or they are moved to another location away 
from the influence of the college and their friends.  The 
issue here is not retention of students, but the 
well-being of students.  Cult conversion and membership 
replaces critical thinking with cult jargon, dogmatic 
adherence to cult doctrine, and creates the inability to 
reason or think independently (Conway & Siegelman, 1978).  
This is perhaps cults' greatest threat.  It is the 
antithesis of what colleges and universities have been 
organized to teach.

There are other documented changes in the personalities of 
young people who have joined cults.  Students' speech and 
writing lose irony and metaphor, and their vocabulary is 
reduced, taking on a rote memorized style (Clark, 1979).  
Intellectually, cult members appear to exhibit a decrease 
in intelligence and, if they leave the cult, they are 
frequently forced to assume menial jobs until they can 
relearn thinking for themselves (Delgado, 1977; Singer, 
1979).  Other mental harms include reduction of cognitive 
flexibility and adaptability, narrowing and blunting of 
affection, regression of behavior to childlike levels, and 
possible pathological symptoms, including disassociation, 
delusions, and similar mental disorders (Delgado, 1977).

Even this listing of harms does not capture the 
devastating impact that such membership has on the 
emotional life of students and their families.  The hopes, 
aspirations, and dreams of students and their parents are 
usurped by these groups.  Several years ago I met with a 
former student who left the university for a weekend 
retreat in New Orleans with a group of students associated 
with what was at that time a campus organization.  He 
never returned to the university.  He was living in 
Chicago, where he had been sent by the organization 
shortly after he had become a member.  For the first time 
in almost ten years he was being given "permission" by the 
leadership to come back and visit his mother.

He told me that after being in a training camp for a 
while, he had been sent to the Chicago area where he 
became part of a mobile fund raising team which sold 
flowers.  Apparently he was very good at it--raising 
between $200 and $300 a day and more than twice this much 
on certain holidays like Mother's Day.  As a trusted 
member of the organization he was permitted to retain some 
of the money for the purpose of starting a business which 
would wholesale fresh fish to oriental restaurants in the 
Chicago area.  He indicated that in the year preceding 
this visit, the company he started grossed in excess of a 
million dollars, the profits from which all went to the 
cult.  He was given a subsistence allowance.  The money he 
needed to travel to see his mother was given to him by the 
cult and he was permitted to stay with her for a week, 
during which time he was required to check with local 
members of the cult who would in turn check on him.

Now, at the age of thirty, this person was seeking more in 
his life.  In a mass marriage arranged by the cult 
leadership, he had been married to a woman from another 
country.  He met her only once prior to the marriage and 
was denied permission to consummate the marriage until he 
and his wife brought seven new members into the cult.  
After the marriage, he returned to Chicago and his wife 
was sent to Houston to work for the cult.  He regretted 
not having a family, not spending more time with his 
mother, not being able to buy some things that he would 
have liked to make his life more comfortable, and he 
resented being so totally dependent on the cult for his 
existence.  He said he envied some of his high school 
friends who had careers and families.  Despite all of 
this, he was not prepared to leave the cult.  He simply 
did not know how to leave or what he could do if he left.

This very sensitive and capable person had been led to so 
devalue himself--even though he had established a very 
successful business on very little capital--that he 
believed he owed his very existence to the cult.  He 
lacked the motivation, skills, and self-confidence to 
leave and to realize the dreams he had for himself.

This is only one of many stories of young people who leave 
college to join a cult.  College administrators seldom 
hear from them again.  These students are lost among the 
thousands of others who are moving through the 
universities, changing schools, dropping out, or stopping 
out for periods of time.  As universities have grown 
larger, they have come to lose sight of the lives of 
individual students.  It is only when the situation 
becomes acute or a particular student's problem is brought 
to the attention of the appropriate college administrator 
that efforts are mounted to address the problem created by 
the cults.  Most of the time they quietly draw students 
away from colleges without anyone but the parents feeling 
or knowing of the loss.

Most of the problems cults pose on college campuses are 
associated with psychological, emotional, and financial 
harm to individual students and to their families.  There 
are, however, some extremist cult groups which are even 
more harmful.

One of the recent cult attractions among high school 
students is an interest in satanism and the occult.  
During the past several years many newspaper articles 
(Zorn, 1986; Washington, 1986; Stone, 1986; Man Charged, 
1985; Burks, 1986; Satan Worship, 1984; Baird, 1984) have 
reported on homicides, suicides, and animal sacrifices 
involving adolescents who were associated with some form 
of satanic cult.  One of the links between satanism and 
its new interest among some young people appears to be 
heavy-metal rock music.  A folklore surrounding some of 
the popular heavy-metal rock music groups suggest that 
some groups are "devil worshipers."

Reports of satanic cults have surfaced in places such as 
Chicago, Albuquerque, El Paso, Oklahoma City, and Logan, 
Ohio.  It is difficult to know how prevalent these groups 
are because they are very secretive.  One estimate is that 
out of the 3,500 or so cult groups functioning in the 
United States, about 500 are associated with the occult 
(Baird, 1984).  How many are violent is not known.  
Concern about satanic groups resolves around existence of 
ritual deaths, animal and human sacrifices, and other acts 
of violence.  Clearly, participation in one of these 
extremist groups presents a threat to the individuals in 
the group and in many cases to the community in which the 
group operates.

Although college campuses have not been associated with 
any of the more public reports of satanic group activity, 
a number of high school students have (cf. Langone & 
Blood, 1990).  It is reasonable to assume that some high 
school students have continued these associations in 
college; indeed, the presence of satanic graffiti (e.g., 
inverted crosses, the number 666 indicating the sign of 
the devil, pentagrams) on buildings on or near the college 
campus and students who have tattooed themselves with 
similar symbols suggest that, as with other segments of 
society, satanic groups are probably functioning on 
college campuses.

   Legal Considerations in Working with Cults on Campus

University administrators have no legitimate interest in 
controlling the content of a religious belief.  The 
freedom to hold a belief, however, is separate from the 
freedom to act upon that belief.  It is here that 
university administrators have an interest in controlling 
cult behaviors that threaten the well-being of students.  
The courts have provided guidelines for university 
administrators working with the complex issues associated 
with religious cults and First Amendment rights.

The plethora of legal issues surrounding the free 
expression of religious beliefs, the establishment of 
religion, the rights of association, and freedom of speech 
make working with cult groups a complex issue at public 
universities.  Private colleges which are not 
significantly involved in state action--meaning that they 
are not so intertwined in the public sector as to make the 
college indistinguishable from public institutions--have 
greater latitude in working with these groups.  There is 
no requirement that private colleges consider these groups 
for recognition.  They have the legal right to restrict 
cult leaders from being on their campuses, except where 
these leaders have become students.

College administrators must grapple with managing the 
intrusive proselytizing of cult groups and determining 
what involvement, if any, they are to have on campus.  
Four issues must be considered:  a) legal implications, b) 
the development of institutional policies to control the 
behavior of these groups, c) identification of pro-active 
educational measures that will inform and prepare students 
for the recruiting efforts of these groups, and d) 
consideration of how one works with existing on-campus 
groups and future groups which become part of the campus 
community.  Subsequent sections will deal with each of 
these issues.

The days when college administrators could operate in loco 
parentis for
students have long since passed.  They have been replaced 
by court decisions which form the framework for much 
administrative decision-making in today's litigious 
society.

Although the courts have occasionally strayed into the 
issue of religion at private colleges, for the most part, 
the issue of religious freedom has been one adjudicated 
principally at institutions of public higher education.  
These challenges have been set in the context of the 
religion clauses of the First Amendment.  Embodied in 
these religion clauses are three concepts: religion, the 
establishment of religion, and religious expression.  
Chief Justice Burger, writing for the Court in Lemon v. 
Kurtzman 403 U.S. 602 (1971), observed of these clauses 
that the language was "at best opaque, particularly when 
compared with other portions of the Amendment" (p. 612).  
The language and fluctuating interpretations of religion 
have caused confusion at public universities, which have 
attempted to balance the religious liberty rights of 
students with the duty of the university as a state agency 
to maintain a separation between church and state.  Most 
of the conflicts between students and public universities 
have focused on:  (1) use of facilities by religious 
organizations, (2) religious proselytizing, (3) religious 
conduct, and (4) recognition of student organizations.

Use of Facilities by Student Religious Organizations

The question of whether or not permitting students to use 
university facilities for religious purposes violates the 
establishment clause of the First Amendment was raised in 
Keegan v. University of Delaware, 349 A. 2d 14 (Del., 
1975) when a group of Roman Catholic students requested 
the use of one of the public areas of the University-owned 
residence hall for the purpose of holding regular 
religious services.  The University of Delaware had a 
policy which prohibited the use of its facilities for any 
religious purpose under the belief that such support would 
violate the establishment clause.  The Supreme Court of 
Delaware overturned a lower court ruling to find on behalf 
of the students, striking down the University's policy.  
In doing so, the Court concluded that because no religious 
group would be given special accommodation by a change in 
the University's policy--and if there was, such benefit 
would be incidental--there was no infringement of the 
establishment clause.

In Chess v. Widman, 480 F.Supp 907 (W.D. MO., 1979), the 
University of Missouri - Kansas City denied the use of its 
facilities for regular religious service to a 
fundamentalist Christian student organization on the 
premise that the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 
Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963 in Tilton v. 
Richardson 403 U.S.672 (1970) prohibited the sectarian use 
of any college or university facility built under the 
provisions of this act.  The court held that by letting 
the fundamentalist Christian organization, called 
Cornerstone, regularly use University facilities the 
University would be advancing religion in violation of the 
establishment clause.  In reaching its decision supporting 
the University, the Court specifically disagreed with the 
Delaware Supreme Court in Keegan v. University of 
Delaware.

However, on appeal (635 F.2d 1310, {App. Ct. 8th Cir., 
1980}), the decision of the Chess v. Widman court was 
reversed.  In upholding the right of the student 
organization to use University facilities for regular 
religious meetings, the Appellate Court found that the 
University could not deny equal access to a public forum 
on the basis of the content of the message, religious, 
political, or otherwise.  The University of 
Missouri-Kansas City appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court 
(Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263 {1981}), which affirmed 
the Appellate Court's ruling.

It is probably safe to conclude that public universities 
can permit students to use facilities for religious 
purposes without violating the establishment clause.  
Denying the use of university facilities to religious 
groups when the facilities are made available to other 
campus organizations has been considered by the courts to 
be an unfair restriction on students' free expression 
rights under the First Amendment.

Religious Proselytizing

The courts have recognized individuals' rights to express 
their religious beliefs, even when that expression may be 
an annoyance to others (Douglas v. City of Jeannette, 
1943).  The free expression of belief--which may include 
the distribution of literature or the sale of religious 
material--is considered in light of the sincerity of the 
held belief and a compelling state interest in controlling 
that belief.  The case of the International Society of 
Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) v. Barber 650 F.2d 430 (2nd 
Cir., 1981) serves to demonstrate the extent to which the 
courts will go to permit the free expression of religious 
belief.  In ISKON v. Barber, officials of the New York 
State Fair attempted to control the "begging" and 
proselytizing of ISKCON by restricting and ultimately 
barring the solicitation of money and proselytizing 
activities by any group on the fair grounds.  ISKON sued, 
contending that the regulation placed an unfair 
restriction on their Sankirtan belief.  Although the 
defendants were able to show numerous examples of fraud, 
street scams, quick money change deals, deception and 
other unlawful acts which ISKCON devotees had been trained 
to use to acquire money from patrons under the guise of 
religious proselytizing, the U.S. Court of Appeals, 
striking down a lower court ruling, declared that, 
"Notwithstanding evidence that fraud is occasionally 
involved in the practice of Sankirtan, the state has 
failed to show that methods less restrictive than outright 
prohibition are ineffective in checking misconduct.  
Accordingly, we hold that the state unconstitutionally 
interfered with the free exercise rights of ISKCON members 
by enacting and enforcing its anti-solicitation rule" 
(ISKCON v. Barber, 1981).

University campuses, however, are "not open to the public 
in the same way that streets and parks are" (Widman v. 
Vincent, 1981, p. 278).  Universities do have the right to 
control time, place, and manner (Healy v. James, 1972) of 
religious proselytizing, meetings, distribution of printed 
material, and to exercise similar control over the 
environs of its campus--provided that the restrictions are 
reasonable and applied consistently to religious and 
non-religious groups alike.

Ohio State University attempted to control the 
distribution of a fundamentalist Christian newspaper 
called Today's Student by controlling the time, place, and 
manner of distribution.  Although restrictions placed on 
distribution of this material were similar to those 
imposed on other University groups, they were different 
from the wider distribution of the University supported 
newspaper, The Lantern.  The Solid Rock Foundation, the 
campus group wishing to distribute the newspaper, sought a 
restraining order to prohibit the University from 
interfering with its free exercise rights under the First 
Amendment (Solid Rock Foundation v. The Ohio State 
University, 478 F.Supp.96. {S.D. Ohio, E.D., 1979}).  The 
University argued that such wide distribution would 
violate the establishment clause by excessively entangling 
the University in the dissemination of religious material.  
The Court disagreed with the University's contention and 
found that although the University had controlled only 
time, place, and manner, the restrictions were 
unreasonable in that it did not allow the student 
organization to reach all segments of the student 
population and, therefore, abridged the students' free 
exercise rights.

Non-student groups may have limited rights on state 
university campuses.  These rights include the 
dissemination of free printed material, the freedom to 
engage a passer-by in religious or political discussions, 
and the freedom to speak at forums open to the public.  
Conversely, non-student groups do not have the right to 
sell publications, food, or other items, nor to engage in 
other forms of fund-raising without the permission of the 
university.  The Court in Glover v. Cole, 762 F.2d. 1197, 
U.S. Appellate Court (4th Ct.), 1985 acknowledged this 
when it held that West Virginia State College could 
regulate the manner in which third parties used University 
property differently than the manner afforded student 
groups.

The issue of religious proselytizing on campus was also 
addressed in Chapman v. Thomas, ...F.Supp..., No. 
80-757-CIV-5, (U.S. Dist. Ct., E.E., NC, Raleigh Div., 
1982).  North Carolina State University had a policy which 
restricted door-to-door solicitation in University 
residence halls.  The policy was challenged by Scott 
Chapman (a student) after he received a university 
disciplinary sanction for violating this policy in his 
attempt to promote his Christian beliefs by conducting 
door-to-door evangelism in a University residence hall.  
The Court upheld the University's policy.  In ruling for 
the university, the Court found that the residence halls 
were not a public forum, but were similar to one's 
household.  So long as the University uniformly enforced 
the non-solicitation policy, the Court supported the 
University restriction as a permissible infringement on 
the religious liberty rights of Mr. Chapman.

It can be concluded from this analysis that universities 
may reasonably control time, place, and manner of 
religious proselytizing on campus in areas considered 
public forums, consistent with its regulation of other 
groups.  Universities may restrict door-to-door evangelism 
(at least in the Federal District of Raleigh N.C., but 
probably elsewhere) where it also restricts other forms of 
door-to-door solicitation.

Religious Conduct

Although the courts have protected religious proselytizing 
in most forums, it has not protected all forms of 
religious conduct.  It has been established that the 
freedom to hold beliefs is legally separate from the 
freedom to act on those beliefs when the state has a 
compelling interest in doing so (Wood, 1979).

Students have on occasion attempted to assert their right 
to use drugs under the guise of religious expression.  
Although the U.S. Supreme Court did let stand a unique 
interpretation by the California Supreme Court in People 
v. Woody 61 Cal. 2d 716, 394 P.2d 813, (1964), which held 
that the use of peyote by Navaho Indians who were members 
of the Native American Church was a religious sacrament 
under the protection of the First Amendment free-exercise 
clause, the use of drugs for alleged religious reasons has 
generally not been sustained by the courts.

It is probably fair to say that universities are not 
compelled to permit students unrestricted license for 
insidious, unlawful, or hedonistic conduct under the 
assertion of religious liberty.  Nevertheless, the 
university may not seek to control religious conduct 
solely because it believes the conduct to be abhorrent.

Recognition of Religious Student Organizations

Where public universities recognize or register 
organizations, the free exercise of religion also extends 
to the right of students to organize for the purpose of 
advancing common purposes through a student organization.  
If a university recognizes or registers any student 
organization, it must use the same set of 
nondiscriminatory policies in considering the application 
of all student organizations, whether they be for a 
secular, political, social, academic, or other lawful 
purpose.

The issue of student organizations and their right to 
affiliate at public universities has been an issue of 
court interest in its own right.  In the landmark case of 
Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (1972), the Supreme Court 
held that Central Connecticut State College could not deny 
recognition to a local chapter of the Students for a 
Democratic Society solely on the belief that the 
organization might do harm.  The court established a 
three-pronged test for nonrecognition as follows:  (1) a 
group advocating lawless action and having the means to 
carry it out, (2) a group's refusal to follow the 
reasonable rules and regulations of the university or the 
law, or (3) a group engaging in any acts that disrupted 
the university or acts that were unlawful.

In Aman v. Handler, 653 F.2d, 41 (1981), the Collegiate 
Association for the Research of Principles (CARP), one of 
the front groups used by Rev. Moon's Unification Church to 
recruit college students into his organization (Hassan, 
1981), sought a restraining order against the University 
of New Hampshire after the group's application for formal 
recognition was denied by the Vice President for Student 
Affairs.

Cathy Aman, the plaintiff, alleged that denial of official 
recognition of CARP by the University of New Hampshire 
impaired her freedom of religious expression, assembly, 
and association.  A three-judge panel, sitting on appeal, 
held that the University "failed to meet its burden of 
showing that it had reasonable grounds for refusing to 
give recognition to the organization" (Aman v. Handler, 
1981, p. 41) and remanded the case to the district 
court--with instructions that the district court decide 
the case in accordance with the standards established in 
Healy v. James.

The courts have jealously protected the rights of citizens 
to freely exercise their religious beliefs.  Only where 
there have been a compelling state interest and a lack of 
less restrictive means of control have the courts sought 
to regulate the free expression of religion.  In conflicts 
arising between an individual's free-exercise rights and 
the interests of public universities to maintain a 
separation between Church and State, the courts generally 
have ruled in ways that provide the greatest religious 
liberty to the individual.

Universities have yet to demonstrate to the courts 
compelling reasons of sufficient merit to restrain cults 
and other totalist religious groups from involvement on 
campus, even where it can be established that they are 
psychologically destructive to individuals.  Although 
these groups may represent beliefs that are antithetical 
to the educational mission of an institution and the 
associated legal conduct is abhorrent to the educational 
community, the courts have not attempted to intervene to 
control the lawful exercise of religious belief.

Public university administrators may conclude the 
following:

1.      Public educational facilities may be used by 
student religious groups.

2.      Student religious groups have a right to 
proselytize on campus (except in the private areas 
of a university residence hall).

3.      Religious conduct which does not violate the law 
or lawful university policies should be permitted.

4.      Where the university recognizes student 
organizations, religious organizations must also 
be recognized without regard for their espoused 
religious beliefs.

5.      Policies formulated to regulate student behavior 
on campus may be applied to religious groups in 
the same manner as other organizations; however, 
no special policies which may be construed as 
defining a suspect religious classification may be 
enacted to control religious groups.

6.      Nonstudent groups have limited rights, which 
include distributing free literature, engaging 
people in conversations on any topic, and speaking 
at open public forums, but do not necessarily 
include the right to use university facilities or 
to conduct fund-raising activities on the campus 
of a state university.

                 Administrative Policies

Few college administrators are willing to confront the 
myriad of legal problems one assumes when attempting to 
restrict cult groups from any involvement on campus.  
Thus, administrators are left to develop impartial 
institutional policies designed to control the deceptive 
and coercive behavior used by many cult groups.  This 
author has argued elsewhere (Blimling, 1981, 1987) that 
universities should:

1.      Require all groups to state clearly the name of 
the organization and all of its affiliations on 
all the literature it distributes and in all of 
the proselytizing it does.  (All written material 
distributed by student organizations must list all 
affiliations and associations a student 
organization has with any organization outside of 
the institution.  Advertisements, regardless of 
the media used, must clearly state the student 
organization's affiliations as presented in its 
original application for recognitions or as 
researched by the university);

2.      Develop a policy which prohibits the use of 
harassment, mind-control techniques, threats, or 
coercive persuasion to recruit or retain members 
in any student organization;

3.      Restrict door-to-door solicitation in the 
residence halls and fraternity and sorority 
houses; and

4.      Prohibit student organizations from interfering 
with or disrupting the lawful educational process, 
purposes, and functions of the university.

These four policies should be applied to all campus groups 
and not just to cult groups.  However, these policies, if 
enforced, are likely to have the greatest influence on 
controlling the behavior of the cult groups who are known 
to use techniques and approaches in conflict with these 
policies.

Another approach to this issue has been to establish an 
"ethical code" for campus evangelism.  Reverend Robert 
Watts Thornburg (ICEP, 1988) at Boston University and 
others have developed guidelines for ethical behavior by 
campus religious groups.  Their code of ethics restricts 
behaviors that depersonalize, coerce, manipulate, or 
attempt to bypass a person's critical faculties.  It 
establishes a commitment to fairness and principles for 
working with students.

There are other policies which are useful in working with 
campus groups.  Most universities require that a new 
student organization have a minimum number of full-time 
students petitioning for recognition before recognition 
will be considered (e.g., charter membership to be 
comprised of not less than ten full-time students).  This 
membership requirement does two things.  First, it ensures 
that there is sufficient interest in the formation of a 
new student organization to merit its recognition, and 
second, it makes it more difficult for cult groups to 
register one or two recruiters as students for the purpose 
of starting a new student organization.

Requiring student organizations to have a faculty sponsor 
as part of their application for recognition is another 
policy which has merit.  Student organizations should 
advance the educational mission of the university and 
contribute to the overall educational experience of 
students.  Faculty, serving in advisory roles with student 
organizations, can help ensure that these organizations 
meet these expectations.  If interested and actively 
involved, faculty should be of benefit to students as role 
models, confidants, and mentors.  It is likely that some 
of the more extreme cult groups will find it difficult to 
locate a faculty sponsor willing to support its efforts.  
This faculty sponsorship requirement has the effect of 
setting a minimum standard for acceptance--namely, that at 
least one member of the faculty must deem the organization 
to have educational merit before it can be recognized as a 
student organization.

Universities can restrict membership in recognized student 
organizations to students.  There is no requirement that 
universities make their facilities available to 
individuals who are not members of the university 
community.  This restriction is consistent with the 
institution's purpose of providing an educational 
experience for its students, and it helps to control the 
influence of those over whom the university has no direct 
control.

Implicit in establishing reasonable rules for the 
recognition of student organizations and their subsequent 
conduct is the need to establish a fair procedure to 
address withdrawing recognition.  Most institutions have 
some form of disciplinary penalties which can be assigned 
to student organizations which violate the reasonable 
regulations of the institutions, and these have been 
successfully applied to religious groups on college 
campuses (The Collegiate Advisor, 1983).  It is 
appropriate for administrators to reexamine these policies 
to consider if the due process requirements outlined could 
be strengthened or clarified.  If it becomes necessary to 
take disciplinary action against one of these 
campus-affiliated cult groups, it is possible that the 
matter will be brought to the attention of the courts.  
The courts will be principally interested in whether or 
not the student organization was given substantive and 
procedural due process in any decision reached in holding 
the organization accountable for the violation of policy.

Private colleges and universities have greater latitude in 
the recognition of student organizations and in who gets 
to use their institutional facilities.  Colleges which 
have a recognized religious heritage generally are not 
compelled to permit the involvement of student 
organizations which espouse beliefs and values 
antithetical to the institution's mission.  They can 
justifiably refuse to entertain the cadre of religiously 
aligned groups wishing to use their campus as a base for 
recruiting students.

Although these colleges may be insulated against direct 
campus recruiting through student organizations, they may 
find these groups establishing organizations on property 
adjacent to the campus.  They may discover cult recruiters 
haunting places on and off campus where students spend 
their leisure time, and they may find newly-converted 
students in the college acting as recruiters for 
off-campus organizations.  Private college administrators 
need to be sensitive to what they can do with their 
students and to educational programs they may wish to 
develop to better inform their students.

Having addressed the issue of cults becoming student 
organizations through a recognition procedure, the 
question must also be asked if there is any way for 
institutions to avoid this level of involvement.  Many 
times these groups are looking only for a public forum to 
share their beliefs.  When institutions have rigidly 
structured their policies to limit access to the student 
population, they may be forcing some organizations to 
become more involved than is perhaps necessary or 
desirable.  If the institution does not currently have an 
open forum area of the campus where any person can stand 
on a "soap box" and espouse any belief he or she wishes, 
it may wish to consider developing this option.  When 
these groups have the latitude to stand and be heard, they 
offer little threat to anyone.  Because cults recruit 
psychologically and not intellectually, colleges have 
everything to gain and nothing to lose when these 
recruiters attempt to explain their synergistic beliefs to 
a cynical group of often-bemused college students. This 
public exposure unveils for students the true purposes of 
these groups and, through the questioning and challenges 
of the audience, the faulty premises on which the 
organizations are based.  It is when they are forced to 
conduct their activities covertly that they pose the 
greatest threat to students.

Educational Programs

One of the most effective means of countering the 
intrusive proselytizing of cult groups is to inform the 
student population about the activities of these groups.  
Many institutions have developed brochures about cult 
recruiting on campuses, and videotapes, films, and 
speakers are available through various organizations 
(e.g., American Family Foundation, International Cult 
Education Program, Cult Awareness Network) which can be 
used to inform the general student population.

This educational approach can be used effectively.  
Several years ago when various cult groups became active 
at the University of Delaware, the student-affairs 
division used a well-organized educational campaign to 
counter the recruiting efforts of these groups (Sharky, 
1984).  The public exposure brought to bear from the 
student newspaper, from educational programs and speakers 
in the residence halls, and from similar programs in the 
student union had the effect of alerting the campus 
population to the activities of these groups.  As a 
result, the groups were unsuccessful in their recruiting 
efforts and left to seek more fertile grounds for 
recruiting.  The University of Toronto took a similar 
approach and has held several "Cult Awareness Weeks" to 
educate its students about cult groups (Max, Han, & 
Springer, 1985).

Educational programming about cults should be a regular 
part of the campus program for students but, more 
importantly, it should be a regular part of the training 
of new staff--particularly student staff.  Student staff 
who work as resident assistants, orientation leaders, or 
peer counselors have the closest contact with other 
students.  These students have generally been selected for 
these positions because of their good human-relations 
skills and because they offer viable role models for other 
students.  Student staff should be trained to look for 
some of the warning signs common to people being drawn 
into cults.  The Citizens Freedom Foundation (1983) (now 
known as the Cult Awareness Network) lists these as:  (1) 
a sudden change in behavior, (2) a breakdown in 
communication with old friends and increased 
secretiveness, (3) a sudden rush of new friends who are 
often off-campus and often "strange", (4) increased talk 
about how society is evil, (5) change in personality 
following a retreat with a group and talk about a 
"conversion experience", and (6) the inability to engage 
in intellectual discussion without parroting the scripture 
or dogma of some organization.

Armed with information about recruiting tactics, what to 
look for in susceptible students, knowledge of campus 
groups, and common sense, student staff can be one of the 
most effective sources of information about cult 
activities on campus.  Educating these students is the 
cornerstone of any well-conceived educational program 
about cults.

Management of Cult Groups on Campus

Despite educational programs, trained staff, and 
reasonable standards for recognition of campus 
organizations, tenacious cult groups will continue to be 
involved with universities.  The question then becomes one 
of managing their involvement to minimize the associated 
problems they create for students.  One approach was noted 
above.  This is to establish a free-speech area in which 
cult leaders can be heard and their beliefs and practices 
openly challenged and debated by the educational 
community.  Another useful approach is to insist that the 
leaders of the religious cult participate with leaders of 
the other religious groups on campus in an organization of 
associated campus ministers, which exists on many 
campuses.  This regular involvement opens avenues of 
communication among the different denominations, and it 
can have both an informative and moderating effect on cult 
leaders.

Regular meetings with cult leaders on campus to express 
the institution's concern about individual students or the 
activities of the group are, of course, in order.  The 
closer the contact institutions maintain with cult 
leaders, the greater the likelihood that the institution 
may be influential in preventing and resolving student 
problems.

                        Conclusion

It is difficult to work with college students and not 
delight in their success and share their joy as they 
accomplish some of their major life goals in college.  
Similarly, it is disturbing to see these same young people 
become the unwitting victims of unprincipled, self-serving 
cults.  It is hard to ignore these groups as they lay 
siege to the campus.  Administrative apathy and ignorance 
are their friends.  They count on the uninformed 
administrator to allow them the opportunity to prey upon 
students.

Colleges and universities have a duty to provide students 
with an environment which fosters freedom of thought and 
the development of an educated and principled person.  
Cults with their coercive and unprincipled tactics rob 
students of the very things colleges and universities have 
been organized to teach.

To those who claim that this level of care by university 
administrators is in loco parentis, the answer is "it is."  
It is the same in loco parentis care we extend to students 
when we impose fire and other safety regulations which 
threaten their well-being on campus.

Operating within the guidelines of the courts, college 
administrators should educate students and staff about the 
practices of cult groups, develop appropriate policies for 
the recognition of all campus groups, and write policies 
that address the specific cult behaviors which put our 
students at risk.

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Physician, 15(2), 80-83.
Sharky,  S. (1984, March). Educational programming about 
cults. Presented at the annual meeting of the 
National Association of College Student Personnel 
Administrators, Louisville, KY.
Singer,  M. (1979). Coming out of the cults. Psychology 
Today, 12(8), 72-82.
Solid Rock Foundation v. The Ohio State University. (1979) 
478 F.Supp 96 (S.D. Ohio, E.D.).
Stoehr,  R. (1978). Why young people join cults. Campus 
Ministry Communications.
Stone, D. (1986, January 3). Satan cult site found. The 
Montgomery Journal.
Tilton v. Richardson. (1971), 403 U.S. 672.
Toffler, A. (1971). Future Shock. New York: Bantom Books.
Washington, D. (1986, February 16). Fad or fanatic cult. 
El Paso Times.
Widmar v. Vincent. (1981). 454 U.S. 263.
Wood, J. (1979, February 5). Testimony before a special 
U.S. Senate Committee entitled Information meeting 
on the cult phenomenon in the United States, 
(Transcript of Proceedings).
Zorn, E. (1986, April 27). Satan worship called dangerous, 
growing. The Chicago Tribune.


   Developing an Ethical Code for Proselytizers

               Marcia R. Rudin, MA


The American Family Foundation is conducting a 
groundbreaking new program with leading Evangelicals and 
representatives of other religious groups designed to 
develop an ethical code for proselytizers.  This code will 
be especially useful on college and university campuses 
where much religious proselytizing takes place.  It will 
provide a useful guide to those who are concerned about 
cult recruitment at their schools and will help ensure 
that campus religious activity falls within publicly 
agreed-upon ethical guidelines.
        
Several drafts of the code have been written, and work on 
the document is continuing. (See the model code below.)
        
"Those of us who study cults and educate the public about 
them must always carefully define the differences between 
cults and mainstream religions," says Dr. Michael D. 
Langone, Executive Director of the American Family 
Foundation.  "One of the goals of the ethical code 
development program is to help clarify features which 
distinguish 'fanatics' and 'phonies' from ethical 
proselytizers.  This will help the public to distinguish 
ethical proselytizers from cultists, show cultists how 
they must change in order to enter the ethical mainstream 
of our pluralistic society, and help mainstream religious 
groups teach their representatives how to maintain ethical 
behavior when witnessing to their faiths."
        
Dr. Langone launched the program after several years of 
AFF research indicated that cultic relationships and other 
unethical forms of social influence can arise within any 
group.  "We think of cults in terms of their members' 
behavior, not the group's theology," Langone explains.  
"It's a tough question of unethically manipulative 
relationships.  Through our interactions with 
Evangelicals, we at AFF came to realize that complaints we 
had received about Evangelical groups often involved 
individual deviations and were not necessarily 
representative of the behavior of the groups in question.  
But these ethical lapses caused many people to equate all 
Evangelicals with controversial cults, a comparison which, 
of course, disturbs Evangelicals.  So I wanted leading 
Evangelicals and other religious leaders to join with the 
AFF in developing an effective and comprehensive ethical 
code that we can all agree on."
        
Dr. Harold Bussell, formerly Dean of the Chapel at Gordon 
College in Wenham, MA, and now Senior Pastor at the 
Hamilton Congregational Church in Hamilton, MA, is one of 
the prominent Evangelicals involved in the ethical code 
project.  "It's extremely important that Evangelicals be 
involved in producing an ethical proselytizing code," 
Bussell contends.  "Not only will it help protect people 
from abuses by any group, but clarifying guidelines will 
protect the religious freedom of everyone because it will 
allow them to present their religious views without being 
stereotyped as cults.  This has been happening to 
Evangelicals, and it's in our interest to do what we can 
to prevent that."
        
According to Bussell, one of the major differences between 
cults and mainstream religious groups is that the latter 
oversee their members' behavior and have disciplinary 
methods to correct it, whereas cults do not.  "An ethical 
code is an absolute necessity," Bussell says.  "If 
Evangelicals had operated by such a code twenty years ago 
we wouldn't have the problems with disreputable 
televangelists and aberrant groups that we have today."
        
Rabbi A. James Rudin, National Director of Interreligous 
Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, has also 
participated in the program since its inception.  
"Historically Jews have always been targeted for 
aggressive conversionary activity," he says.  "While we 
recognize that it is an important part of the Christian 
theological agenda, we deeply resent such activity.  
Having a good ethical code will help ensure that such 
witnessing will be honest, ethical, and totally 
aboveboard."
        
Rudin claims that having even a preliminary draft of the 
code at his fingertips helps him in his work with 
Christian groups.  "I participated in a heated symposium 
with some Hebrew Christians several years ago that was 
sponsored by Christianity Today magazine," Rudin explains.  
"I read the draft ethical code document aloud to them and 
pointed out how their deceptive recruiting methods go 
against it.  That had a great impact on everyone there."
        
Rev. Robert Watts Thornburg, Dean of Boston University's 
Marsh Chapel and Chaplain of the University, cites Rabbi 
Rudin's experience when he asserts that the ethical code 
will be most helpful as a pragmatic tool.  "The code is to 
be a model--it's not to be written in stone," Thornburg 
explains, "and it's not yet clear how it can be enforced.  
We hope that people will adhere to it through peer 
pressure and moral persuasion, rather than through legal 
or official organizational means."
        
"The people I've talked with are very enthusiastic about 
the project and want to help formulate a code," Thornburg 
continues.  "In Boston, for several years, we've had 
encounters with The Boston Church of Christ, a destructive 
group.  In one year over 250 Boston-area college students 
left school to work for that organization and to recruit 
other students into it. That experience has sensitized 
chaplains and college administrators in Boston to the need 
for a behavior-oriented ethical code that provides 
guidelines for determining which behaviors are acceptable 
and which are unacceptable in proselytizing and 
evangelizing."
        
Dr. Langone initiated the program 1985, when he asked 
Reverend Dietrich Gruen, then the Evangelism Specialist 
and Research Assistant for the Inter-Varsity Christian 
Fellowship, to assemble a committee of leading 
Evangelicals to draft an ethical proselytizing code.  
Gruen's poll of more than one hundred Evangelicals around 
the country found that approximately two-thirds of them 
supported the idea of a code.  Under Gruen's direction, a  
team of twelve composed a first draft of an ethical code, 
basing it on the premise of Article Thirteen of the 1948 
United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which states 
that "everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, 
conscience, and religion," and on the Roman Catholic 
Church's Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious 
Freedom.
        
Reverend Gruen and the Inter-Varsity team also contributed 
to a special issue of Cultic Studies Journal, a semiannual 
interdisciplinary journal published by AFF and edited by 
Dr. Langone, entitled "Cults, Evangelicals, and the Ethics 
of Social Influence."  The draft code appeared in the 
journal, which was published in 1985, along with essays 
contributed by leading Evangelical scholars and others.  
That special issue of Cultic Studies Journal explored 
questions about such issues as the proper place of 
proselytizing in an open, pluralistic society, the ethical 
boundries of proselytizing, and the kinds of 
accountability mechanisms that should exist in order to 
help proselytizing groups ensure ethical behavior among 
their members and the members of other groups 
participating in our pluralistic society; i.e., what 
stated codes of ethics, monitoring and training systems, 
or corrective procedures should there be?  The publication 
generated widespread interest in the project.
        
In October 1987, Dr. Langone met with distinguished 
religious leaders including Dr. Bussell, Rabbi Rudin, Rev. 
Thornburg; Rev. James E. McGuire, STD, Director of the 
Newman Center at the University of Pennsylvania; Professor 
Marvin Wilson, Chair of the Department of Biblical and 
Theological Studies at Gordon College; Dr. Ronald Enroth, 
sociology professor at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, 
CA; Rev. James J. LeBar, Consultant on Cults to the 
Archdiocese of New York; Reverend Doug Whallon, regional 
Director for New England of the Inter-Varsity Christian 
Fellowship; and Jeff Woodward, Area Director for 
Connecticut of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.  
Revs. Thornburg, McGuire, and Whallon assembled and 
chaired three independent study groups to examine, 
clarify, revise, and provide a college/university context 
for the first draft of the ethical proselytizing code 
devised by Gruen's team.
        
In the spring of 1988, Reverend Thornburg convened a 
committee at Boston University to change the draft code 
into a model, and in June obtained an endorsement of the 
one-year trial model from the university's Christian 
Chaplain's Office.  On July 15th he met with college 
chaplains from Harvard, M.I.T., and Boston College to 
describe the project and obtain their endorsement of 
Boston University's model code.
        
"I'm excited by the positive results of these meetings," 
Rev. Thornburg says.  "It's not only a negative--trying to 
stop abuses and unethical proselytizing--but there's a 
good spirit from the meetings too.  Everyone is involved 
in this program--Catholics, Jews, Evangelicals, mainline 
Protestants.  It's a genuine breakthrough in interreligous 
dialogue."
        
In November, 1990, Rev. Thornburg presented the Ethical 
Code to a group of Directors of Campus Religious Life from 
the Division of Higher Education in Boston.  "These are 
coordinators of religious life for students in state and 
private colleges, including Christian clergy and rabbis," 
Thornburg explains.  "They seemed very interested in the 
project.  I told them the process of arriving at an 
ethical code is more important than the project.  I'm 
trying to keep the issue alive, telling people where we 
are at the moment."
        
According to Langone, the long term goals of the ethical 
code project are the following: 1) to seek additional 
input from religious groups as well as from communications 
and cult experts for the further development and 
refinement of the ethical code; 2) to develop, test, and 
refine training materials associated with the ethical 
code; 3) to gain endorsement of the code from authorities 
across the American religious spectrum; and 4) to 
establish an interreligous council to provide a non-legal, 
non-governmental court of appeals in matters of unethical 
religious influence.
        
Following is the latest working draft of the Ethical Code:
        
    Revision of a Code of Ethics for Christian 
           Evangelists  as reviewed by
   the Ethical Code Study Group on May 24, 1988
    (given final approval by Boston University    
Christian Chaplains on June 21, 1988)

As Christians engaged in ministry to the campus, we seek 
to support others who are so engaged.  We subscribe to 
this code of ethical behavior in the hope that we may work 
in cooperation and mutual support.  We accept the 
obligation to admonish anyone who represents the Christian 
faith in any manner incompatible with these ethical 
guidelines or who violates legal requirements set forth by 
federal or state law, or the regulations of the 
University.
        
1.      As Christians called by the Living God, we seek to 
respond to that mandate appropriately in our 
private and public lives, including our efforts to 
communicate the Good News about Jesus Christ.

2.      As Christians, we seek to follow the mandate, 
motives, message and model of God in Jesus Christ 
who invites us to adopt them as our own.

3.      We believe all people are created in God's image 
and therefore we disavow any efforts to influence 
people which depersonalize or deprive them of 
their inherent values as persons.

4.      Respecting the value of persons, we believe that 
all persons are worthy of hearing the gospel of 
Christ.  We equally affirm the right of every 
person to retain his/her own belief options and to 
make their own decision.

5.      We believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and 
affirm the role and goal of the Christian 
evangelist.  However, we do not believe that this 
justifies any means to fulfill those goals.  
Hence, we disavow those coercive techniques or 
manipulative appeals intended to bypass one's 
critical faculties, play on one's psychological 
weaknesses, undermine one's relationship with 
family or religious institutions, or mask the true 
nature of Christian conversion.

6.      While seeking to respect individual integrity, 
intellectual honesty, and academic freedom of 
other believers and skeptics, we seek to proclaim 
Christ/the gospel/faith openly.  We reveal our own 
identity and purpose, out theological positions, 
and will not be intentionally misleading.

7.      As Christian evangelists, we seek to embrace 
people of other religious persuasions in true 
dialogue.  That is, we acknowledge our common 
humanity in order to understand, and thus divest 
ourselves of any stereotypes which are barriers to 
true dialogue.


              Training Residence-Hall Staff

               Rev. Robert Watts Thornburg

Destructive religious cults prosper and grow in many cases 
because students feel lonely, isolated, and/or alienated 
from the campus and society.  For example, three cult 
members find a first-year student sitting alone at 
breakfast in a large residence hall.  They move in with 
the broad but plastic smiles of so-called "love bombing."  
Or during final examinations, a cult group begins a new 
program.  Everyone who does programming on campus knows 
that that time is not a good one to begin a new program, 
but the cult group looks for a student who has just 
flunked a crucial exam or who has had a fight with a 
girlfriend or boyfriend, and they find a prime target.

Cults are disastrously well-suited to basic college 
conditions: these include the questioning of values and 
old allegiances and the emergence of bright hopes for the 
future coupled with an idealism for what may be 
accomplished.  If the college community is to respond 
effectively, it must respond with the best personnel 
available, train them satisfactorily, and maintain backup 
people for support when real trouble is found.

             Key Role of the Residence Staff

When a campus is large enough that the Dean of Students or 
chaplain cannot call every student by his or her first 
name and know something about the student's personal 
situation, then the front-line troops become the resident 
or hall advisors (RA's), student personnel staff who have 
daily contact with students in their places of residence. 
As a university chaplain, I believe these student 
personnel are the most important resources for a 
well-rounded academic and personal experience in college.  
They are also among the least rewarded in either financial 
or emotional support.  It is my opinion that the RA's are 
the ones who can most effectively deal with the 
destructive cult activities on campus.  This can only be 
accomplished, however, if they are adequately trained, 
supervised, and supported.  This is the way my campus 
(Boston University) has proceeded.

         Preconditions for Effective Programming

There are three basic assumptions underlying this article:

1.      Training is valuable either when cults are present 
on campus or when a potential exists for their 
presence.  If cults are not yet a present danger, 
a posture of seeking information, patiently 
waiting, and cautious observation on the part of 
senior administration is much wiser than beginning 
a full-fledged program for a situation which does 
not yet exist.  Be prepared and wait, but do not 
implement a program too soon, or you will burn out 
the staff on the issue.

2.      An effective training program must also have the 
understanding and support of the university 
administration--for both the trainer and the 
training program.  This is a very volatile issue, 
and the university administration must be clearly 
aware of the nature of the problem in order to 
avoid disastrous consequences.

3.      The trainer must be competently informed about the 
situation.  This understanding must go in two 
directions:  a) The trainer must know the level of 
involvement, purposes, and procedures of all the 
major cults that are represented on the campus. 
While cult behavior is fairly standard from group 
to group, the training enterprise is much more 
effective if the trainer knows the historical 
roots and the basic doctrines of the cults in 
question.  This will require considerable study or 
the use of previously-trained personnel from 
outside agencies.  b) In addition, it is crucial 
that the trainer discover the local adaptations 
made by these groups.  In order to adequately 
train RA's, the trainer must be adequately 
prepared.

                 Basic Training Approach

A training event for RA's about destructive cults must be 
planned jointly by the trainer and the student-personnel 
staff. (If the Dean of Students and those heading the 
residence-life program do not perceive that the problem is 
real, the trainer will be in a very precarious position.)
         
On large campuses, it is important that the training event 
take place in small groups rather than in one large group. 
A group of thirty to forty is about the maximum for 
adequate training.  The trainer is dealing with religious/ 
political/social/psychological issues, and if one is 
unable to genuinely establish rapport, many serious 
misunderstandings can develop.

It is also important to be able to hear the very real 
questions being asked by the RA's.  An essential problem 
arises when cults use language and nomenclature 
(particularly semi-technical, theological words) which are 
unfamiliar to many RA's.  Therefore, the training event 
must relieve the nervousness which comes from asking what 
may be perceived as naive questions.  Because the issue is 
so emotionally charged, the ease and freedom with which 
the trainer and others talk about religious life and the 
cults' misuse of religious values makes the training more 
valuable.

Vital in the presentation is a very basic distinction 
between belief and behavior.  The Constitution of the 
United States, the charters of many universities, and 
recent Supreme Court decisions have indicated that we may 
not use differences in beliefs to exclude a group simply 
because we disagree with their beliefs or find them 
distasteful.  Unless we can describe behavior which is 
destructive to the basic purpose of the university, there 
is no legitimate way to deal with the basic beliefs of 
cults.  The only exception would be on a campus that has 
doctrinal standards or guidelines for admission.

               Informational Presentations

Informational presentations should include at least the 
following basic questions:
         
1.      "How long have cults been around?"  This would 
include a short historical review of the rise of 
cults on campus as a phenomenon of the 70's, 80's, 
and '90's.  This is important to consider in order 
to legitimize the problem, so that students do not 
become confused with questions about why they have 
not heard of the difficulties surrounding 
religious cults before.

2.      "What's the problem with the cults anyhow?"  It is 
very important for every trainer to clarify most 
specifically and articulately this question. I 
find that cults cut across the essential purpose 
of the university, which is to be a place for free 
inquiry and the critique of ideas.  Cults tend to 
foster a simplistic, reductionist solution to the 
often difficult and complex issues surrounding our 
daily existence.  Cults curtail the free exchange 
and critical analysis of other religious ideas and 
notions.  In addition, cults tend to take students 
away from their essential vocational and 
motivational path, redirecting the student to the 
purposes and aims of the cult group.  Finally, 
cults exist for their own sake and not for the 
high and lofty purposes which they proclaim.

3.      "How do cults operate?"  At this point, it is 
important that a trainer be able to provide 
illustrations as specific as possible from the 
local campus setting so that those being trained 
can begin to recognize the symptoms of cult 
involvement.  The description of the cult's 
activities should progress from the beginning 
stages of the "love bombing" through the process 
of disseminating simple ideas which cut one away 
from other sources of information and friends and 
tie one more closely to a charismatic leader, to 
the movement of a person away from the friends he 
or she has made while participating in the social 
and academic life of the campus.

4.      "What should RA's look for?"  The first and most 
important thing to look for is the "drop out" 
mentality.  A student begins to associate 
exclusively with a particular new group of 
friends, and begins to dissociate from older 
friends and acquaintances.  The RA is practically 
the only person who can recognize this change.  
Very often, the clue will come from a roommate who 
is concerned about special tape recordings being 
played or late-night phone calls.  In the more 
advanced stages, one notices that the student 
involved in the cult begins to have a significant 
fall-off in grades and increased participation in 
late night so-called Bible studies or "soul 
talks."  One other revealing phenomenon we have 
seen is cult graffiti.  In the Bible-based cult 
groups, these are often standard Christian phrases 
written on the walls of residence halls.

5.      "Does the university have an official policy that 
can be followed?"  This, of course, will depend on 
the individual philosophy of the university and 
the extent to which it may clarify its approach to 
campus organizations in light of the cult 
phenomenon.

There are some behaviors which are not acceptable, and 
these need to be adequately addressed.  At Boston 
University there is a clause in the student handbook which 
prohibits solicitation in residence halls, not only for 
money, but also for ideological support and votes.  This 
is an effective deterrent to much initial cult 
solicitation.  As a general rule of thumb, invasion of 
either the living space or the eating space of a student 
by one who wishes to solicit for a cause of any sort 
should be considered unacceptable behavior.  In the public 
areas of the university or community, the First Amendment 
protects the cults' rights to solicit, but in those places 
a student can freely choose to walk away.  When one is 
confronted while eating, studying, or preparing for bed, 
then the situation has become very intrusive.  In 
addition, late night phone calls and messages slipped 
under the door constitute a form of harassment.  An RA, 
when informed of such behavior, can make it clear that 
such behavior is unacceptable.  Requests for moving 
members of a group into a cluster of rooms in one section 
of a residence hall may occasionally arise.  While schools 
have differing policies on this matter, students in a cult 
group who cluster in one section of a residence hall tend 
to place intense pressure on others in that space who are 
not in the group.

             Traps to be Avoided at all Costs

1.      Avoid attacking the beliefs of the cult group. 
Sometimes it is easy and popular, even humorous, 
to joke about a cult's religious beliefs, or to 
attack and belittle these beliefs, as some 
students may do.  This is entirely unacceptable. 
While trainers should use specific illustrations 
speaking about the cult doctrines which may 
adversely affect student life, to belittle such 
doctrines is very counterproductive and results in 
greater support being generated among those who 
demand fair play.

2.      Avoid treating all cult groups as if they were 
alike (e.g. "They all look the same to me.")  They 
are not alike, and failure to appreciate the 
differences will, in practice, hinder both 
effective analysis of the situation and 
counseling.

3.      Resist the temptation to exaggerate or confirm 
false stereotypes.  Occasionally, a student will 
ask whether cults use drugs or sex to attract or 
maintain members.  By and large, cults do not use 
drugs or sex for these purposes, but even a slight 
nod of suspicion, not to say a knowing glance, may 
be seen as confirmation of the charge, however 
unintentional this result.  Such a false 
impression could destroy the trainer's 
credibility.

4.      Don't create cult martyrs.  Cult members will 
sometimes be at your training sessions. Unless you 
are straightforward, direct, and honest in your 
approach, you may make martyrs out of such people 
and other cult members, who can easily show how 
unfairly the group is being treated.  The 
educational result, then, may the opposite of your 
wish because many cult groups suggest to their 
members that the fate of any true believer will be 
martyrdom; an attack that seems unfounded or 
unfair will produce martyrs, make other followers 
even more devoted, and tend to disarm valid 
criticism from the wider university community.

5.      Finally, training about cults must address the 
issue of ambiguity, which has two aspects.  First, 
there is a certain ambiguity felt about cults 
because of the typical contradiction between their 
high ideals and their corrupt practices and goals.  
These contradictions must be made clear.  Second, 
it must be understood that the very ambiguity of 
modern life--felt perhaps most acutely by students 
who seek clear answers and guides where there may 
be none--provides much of the appeal of 
contemporary cults.  As campus leaders, we must 
not be afraid to decry the cult's simplistic 
reductionism.

                    Backup and Support

Dealing with destructive religious cults is not easy for 
new RA's.  The very best training session will only begin 
the process of alerting them to the dangers which may be 
involved.  The initial session must be followed up with 
other opportunities for discussion and observation. 
Without reinforcement, the multitude of responsibilities 
that RA's have between studies and the requirements of the 
residence hall tend to make them blind to even the most 
blatant danger signs.  At best, the training will help the 
RA raise questions but it will not provide any final 
solutions.  There must be further backup.

The well-prepared trainer should have a network of 
resources, including chaplains and other religious 
leaders, psychologists, social workers, and others from 
the campus and the community.  The American Family 
Foundation, which conducts research and provides 
educational materials in the area of cultism, can be an 
important resource for both information about the problem 
and advice on staff training.

Finally, it is important for the trainer to be supportive 
of an RA who finds a problem, but is unable to deal with 
it.  The more training sessions I do, the more often I 
have RA's bringing a student with them to have a 
conversation with me regarding the cult issue.  Parents 
whose children have become involved in cults may make the 
RA or hall director the first target of their distress, 
and they will vent considerable wrath on these staff 
members.  Therefore RA's and hall directors must be able 
to find support from more knowledgeable senior staff in 
dealing with such situations.

                        Conclusion

The university campus exists to assist students in the 
process of reflection and decision-making about the major 
issues and values of life, to provide pre-professional and 
professional training for vocational goals, and to clarify 
the process of analysis and the articulation of ideas.

Religious cults cut across these major purposes.  In 
preparing people to oppose such cults, it is vital that we 
do not produce a new set of zealots who in their fear of 
the very real dangers of cults tend to use some of the 
very procedures or attitudes that are the very ones which 
we decry.  In my several years of planning training 
sessions with RA's and other residence life staff, I have 
found that RA's are a vital link in any adequate 
addressing of the emergence of cults on campus.




       Why Resident Assistant Training on Cultism?

                     Dennis Polselli

First, I would like to explain what a Resident Assistant 
(RA) does.  The expression "overworked and underpaid" 
holds true for an RA more than for any other undergraduate 
position on campus.  (I am indebted to Gregory S. Blimling 
and Lawrence J. Miltenberger's excellent book, The 
Resident Assistant, Working with College Students in 
Residence Halls, (c) 1981, for their insights into this 
subject.)

Some of the many responsibilities of the RA are performing 
administrative details, helping to provide control, 
establishing a healthy residence-hall environment, 
assisting individual student needs, and providing 
residence-hall government programs.  To help RA's fulfill 
these responsibilities, we provide them with extensive 
training programs in such areas as peer counseling, 
behavior problems, conflict resolution, drug and alcohol 
abuse, sexuality issues, suicide intervention, and 
time-management and study skills.

It stands to reason, then, given the above training 
topics, that not to incorporate information on cultism 
would be irresponsible on our part because there are many 
groups clamoring for students' attention.

There are many reasons for students to fall prey to some 
of these groups, however destructive they may turn out to 
be.  We all long to belong to a community.  Students not 
only want to be accepted, they strive to be somebody, and 
some groups offer instant power and gratification with no 
means for the student to find out in advance just how 
destructive the group can be.

At Framingham State College, we provide training in 
cultism for RA's at least once a year.  It is usually our 
first workshop.  We do this because we have seen evidence 
that cult groups have knowledge of what new students are 
going through.  Like the RA's, recruiters for some of the 
groups are slightly older students who have "been there" 
and know how to use the right techniques to make a student 
feel wanted and to feel like he/she is somebody.

Our training program provides information on the 
characteristics of cultic groups and their recruitment 
methods and techniques, which include mind-control, sleep 
deprivation, splitting off from families and friends, and 
total domination.  We tell RA's signs of cultic 
involvement to watch for:  students' changes in sleeping 
habits, not attending classes as much, being away from the 
residence hall floor and from their friends for long 
periods of time, and inquiries from parents.  We use 
videotapes such as the one provided by the International 
Cult Education Program, "Cults: Saying No Under Pressure."  
We provide educational handouts.  We open the floor for 
discussion of any experiences that RA's may be having on 
their floor based on what they may have heard in the 
lectures and seen in the videotapes.

Wendy Noyes, Vice President of Student Services at 
Framingham State College and one of the editors of Cultism 
on Campus: Commentaries and Guidelines for College and 
University Administrators, published jointly in 1987 by 
the American Family Foundation and the National 
Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), 
did the first RA training in this area.  Then we began to 
utilize the college's Counseling Center.  And I began to 
study the literature about cults based on an experience I 
had as a target for recruitment by a cult group fascinated 
by my blindness and taking advantage of my newness to my 
job and my recovery from earlier traumatic experiences.

Now, in addition to providing training on my own campus, I 
do a number of workshops at area RA conferences through 
which we reach a large number of Boston-area college and 
university RA staff.

As I always point out in my workshops, being a community 
builder is the most important duty of the RA, for 
one-to-one counseling shows an individual that you care. 
Providing programs and drawing upon students for their 
talents gives the students the chance to demonstrate their 
skills to their peers and to learn to truly feel 
important.  Working with an isolated student to fit 
him/her into the community could very well determine 
whether or not that student joins a group that will take 
advantage of his/her feelings and state of mind at any 
given moment.

RA's are the best group to do this training because they 
spend about eighty percent of their time in residence 
halls.  This is why we put so much emphasis on RA training 
and spend the money we do on this area of student-affairs 
programming.

RA's are our links to the students, and we must arm them 
to the teeth with all we know about groups in our society 
that may be destructive.  Our RA's must be the first line 
in our defense.  We must also make RA's aware of 
elementary laws that protect the right to freely 
associate, for in the case of public colleges and 
universities, banning cultic groups is not always 
practical.  Then we must urge the RA's to present programs 
on cultism on their floors to further spread the word.  
For in this case, education is the best and only weapon 
there is to keep our students freely thinking and 
challenging and questioning instead of accepting 
everything in life at face value.


           Working With Cult-Affected Families

                Michael D. Langone, Ph.D.


During the last two decades, increasing numbers of parents 
have consulted mental health professionals dealing with a 
child in a cult. At the American Family Foundation, my 
colleagues and I have worked with several thousand 
parents.  Two cult clinics run by the Jewish Board of 
Family and Children's Services in New York and the Jewish 
Federation of Los Angeles have each worked with more than 
1000 families.  Since several million people have been 
affected by cultic groups, thousands of other families 
have probably consulted mental health professionals not 
connected with any of these organizations.

Although the mental health community seems to be more 
responsive to the needs of this population than it was in 
the past, many mental health professionals are not aware 
of the following clinical findings:

.       The majority of cult members are psychologically 
normal, although a sizable minority (30%-50%) 
appear to have had psychological problems that 
predate the cult experience (Clark, 1979; Conway & 
Siegelman, 1982; Galanter, 1989).  Given, however, 
that recent epidemiological data indicate that 20% 
of the general population is diagnosable 
(Friedman, 1986), the cult population is probably 
not markedly different from the norm.
    
.       Cultic environments, which are highly manipulative 
and exploitative, can cause psychiatric 
symptomatology that one would not expect given a 
person's psychological history.  Indeed, Atypical 
Dissociative Disorder, and even occasionally 
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, have been used to 
describe cult-related psychopathology.
    
.       Although some families who seek help with 
cult-related problems are seriously disturbed 
and/or use the cult to hide family problems, the 
majority of families seeking help are normal and 
are concerned because they detect real and 
alarming changes in the cult-involved family 
member (Clark, Langone, Schecter, & Daly, 1981; 
Maron, 1988; Sirkin & Grellong, 1988).
    
If mental health professionals consulted by a cultist's 
family keep these three observations in mind, they will be 
able to complete the first and most important task in 
working with this population: to listen to the family's 
concerns, no matter how strange they may sound.

Four task areas call for ongoing attention:  assessment, 
education, treatment, and training.

                        Assessment

Assessment of cultists' families should take advantage of 
as many data sources as possible, in part because the key 
person in the family, i.e., the cult member, is either 
unavailable or uncooperative.  I utilize interviews, 
questionnaires (Langone, 1983), letters written to and 
from the cult member, resource material on the cult in 
question (including that produced by the cult), and any 
other pertinent information.  I try to get general 
background information on the cultist, his or her family, 
and the group. When, where, and how did he or she join the 
group?  What is the group's name?  How old is the convert?  
How many children are in the family?  I also evaluate the 
family's strengths and weaknesses, psychiatric history, 
conflict areas, and problem-solving style.  A unified 
family is usually much more effective in helping a member 
harmed by cult involvement.  Religious background is 
sometimes significant, especially when the group is a 
religious cult.  Jewish parents whose child has joined a 
Christian cult or Christian parents whose child has joined 
a Hindu cult may, for example, have to deal with feelings 
of betrayal in addition to other disturbing reactions.

Inquiry into the family's experiences with the group and 
the cultist's behavior since joining it can illuminate how 
a particular group has affected a particular person.  It 
is not sufficient to label a group "destructive," because 
not everyone exposed to the same group will respond in the 
same way: some may be devastated; others may remain 
unscathed.  Assessing the impact of a cult environment 
requires, of course, some investigation of the cultist's 
developmental and psychological history.  Pre-cult 
schizophrenic tendencies, for example, could render a 
person especially vulnerable to a group characterized by 
extensive use of hypnotic exercises which blur the 
boundary between self and other.

A key question which helps focus the assessment and 
disentangle valid family concern from "cult hysteria" is 
the following:  "If your child  were not in a cult, what, 
if anything, would bother you about his or her behavior?"  
This question helps the family and therapist identify 
specific detrimental changes before they speculate about 
what caused the disturbing problems.  Although this may 
seem self-evident, those families (the majority in my 
experience) who have learned a little about cults and mind 
control before they seek help tend to let their theory, 
i.e., "my kid is under mind control," structure their 
observations, rather than vice versa.  I try to begin with 
the behavior and then make inferences about what caused 
it.  More often than not, mind control is, in fact, a 
significant factor.

Focusing on behavior, however, helps the family identify 
other significant factors such as pre-cult psychological 
problems and identify concrete behavioral changes that 
they would like to effect (for example, increased 
frequency of communication between parents and a 
cult-involved child.)  Focusing on concrete behaviors also 
helps families understand the need to establish a 
hierarchy of goals such as improving communication skills, 
increasing frequency of contacts, finding out about what 
their family member is doing/thinking/feeling, improving 
rapport, and asking the family member to get "the other 
side of the story" from exit counselors.  My fundamental 
objective is to help families devise an ethical strategy 
for helping their family member make an informed 
reevaluation of his/her cult involvement.

                        Education

If in fact a family member does appear to have been harmed 
by a highly manipulative group, it is generally advisable 
to help family members learn about the psychological 
processes that constitute mind control, brainwashing, 
coercive persuasion, thought reform, or whatever 
terminology one prefers.  Association with grass-roots 
organizations such as the Cult Awareness Network can 
provide helpful information and support for many families, 
as well as access to video and audiotapes, ex-members of 
various cults, and written materials.

                        Treatment

Training, or consultation, consists of teaching family 
members about the cult-conversion process and helping them 
improve their communication skills and devise ethical 
influence strategies.  Frequently, however, families are 
so disturbed by a member's cult involvement that they need 
psychological or psychiatric treatment.  Sometimes the 
training process can proceed while treatment is occurring; 
sometimes the training process and all work aimed at 
helping the cult member must be put on hold while the 
family members try to get a handle on the emotional 
reactions that render them at least partly dysfunctional.

Problem areas that often require direct interventions 
include severe marital or family conflict, depressive 
reactions, anxiety reactions, and the exacerbation of 
long-standing psychological difficulties.  Although 
standard psychotherapeutic techniques can be helpful, 
successfully resolving or managing these problems requires 
that the family members learn about the cult-conversion 
process.  Their emotional reactions usually result from 
confusion, fear, and despair elicited by unsuccessful 
attempts to persuade the cult-involved family member to 
leave a destructive situation.  The family members must 
come to understand enough about the cult-conversion 
process to regain hope and patience or else the ongoing 
frustration of standing by helplessly while a loved one is 
in danger will continually fuel the emotional reactions 
against which traditional therapeutic techniques are 
directed.

Occasionally, however, the family's situation is indeed 
hopeless, and their only viable course is to grieve the 
loss of the cult-involved family member and go on with 
their lives.  Doing this is extremely difficult, 
especially for parents of a cult-involved child.  Because 
the child is alive, a shred of hope always remains, no 
matter how high the level of despair.  One mother, for 
example, described her situation as "being at my child's 
wake, but there's no body."

                         Training

Deciding to teach a family skills for helping a 
cult-involved member presumes at least one of the 
following: a) the family member probably is in an 
environment that is destructive to him or her, b) the 
family wants to help the member make a voluntary 
reevaluation, c) with assistance, the family can probably 
succeed in this goal, or d) the family has so little 
information, but enough reason for concern, that they need 
assistance in devising a strategy to collect enough 
information to determine whether or not to intervene.

Once the decision to proceed is made, training, or 
consultation, should address the following issues:

.       Collecting Information:  Most people are more 
concerned with articulating their point of view 
than testing it.  Since cult-related situations 
involve much uncertainty and ambiguity, it is 
important that family members not become 
complacent opinion-givers.  They should be taught 
how to be "practical scientists," encouraged to 
treat their observations and inferences as 
hypotheses to be tested through the reasonably 
systematic collection of relevant information.

        In addition to the information sources mentioned 
earlier, families should be encouraged to find out 
about the group with which their member is 
involved and, most importantly, to find out what 
the cult-involved family member thinks, feels, and 
does.  Families must be taught to cut back on 
giving advice and to pay more attention to asking 
questions.  Otherwise they will not be able to 
make informed decisions or be as rational as they 
want the cult-involved person to be.

.       Establishing Ethics: Families attempting to help a 
member voluntarily reevaluate a cult involvement 
face an apparent ethical dilemma.  On the one 
hand, they may condemn the cult for using 
deceptively manipulative techniques of persuasion 
and control.  On the other hand, they may not be 
able to avoid at least a mild use of such 
techniques in order to facilitate a voluntary 
reevaluation of cult involvement.

        This dilemma is more apparent than real because 
the ethical propriety of techniques of persuasion 
and control depends upon the magnitude of 
deception and manipulation, the goals of the 
interaction, and the context in which it takes 
place.  These three factors differ significantly 
in cultic and family relationships.  The family's 
goal is to protect and advance their family 
member's well-being; the cult's goal is to fulfill 
the leader's wishes.  The family's manipulations 
are mild; the cult's are extreme.  The family 
functions within the context of an open society 
which encourages  autonomy and the free flow of 
information; the cult is a closed society which 
fosters dependency and systematically inhibits a 
free flow of information.  Moreover, a person's 
family traditionally has more ethical latitude in 
social influence processes involving family 
members than do outsiders.  Hence, if families do 
not employ extremely unethical means of influence 
and if they continually pay attention to the 
ethical dimension of their own behavior, they are 
not likely to go beyond the bounds of ethical 
propriety.

.       Improving Communication:  By the time most 
families seek professional assistance, some 
estrangement of the cult-involved member has 
already occurred.  Families who respond 
emotionally or authoritatively usually feed into 
the cult's attempts to isolate the involved person 
from significant others.  In most cases, 
therefore, professionals need to teach families 
basic communication skills, e.g., the difference 
between "I-statements" and "you-statements," in 
order to build rapport.  Families must realize 
they cannot have any constructive influence if 
they have little or no contact with the involved 
person.  And they cannot increase the amount of 
contact if they do not have the communication 
skills to maintain or build a rapport.

      Modifying the Field of Forces Impinging on the      
Cult-Involved Member

In working with families, I employ a diagram in which I 
place the cult-involved person between boxes representing 
the cult and the mainstream world.  The following three 
forces affect the cultist from both directions:  appeal, 
recoil, and manipulative pull. "Appeal" refers to those 
aspects of the cult and mainstream world that are 
genuinely gratifying to the cultist: e.g., friendships and 
vocational challenges.   "Recoil" refers to those aspects 
of the cult and mainstream world that cause doubt, fear, 
or discouragement. "Manipulative pull" refers to the 
mind-control factor, and is, of course, a strong force 
pulling the person toward the cult.  In the case of the 
cult, however, manipulative processes such as the use of 
chanting to suppress doubts are used to lower the 
cultist's awareness of cult-based recoil.

The consultant's task is to help the family modify the 
field of forces so as to increase the cultist's capacity 
to make an informed, voluntary reevaluation of his/her 
cult involvement.  Initially, families tend to argue with 
the cultist about the mind-control factor, the 
manipulative pull.  This is often unproductive--family 
members tend to get too emotional and, to the extent that 
they succeed in arousing doubts in the cultist, he/she 
tends to suppress the doubts or to retreat from the 
family.  Consequently, families should be made aware of 
the other forces and how they can be modified.  They 
should try to reconnect the cultist to those aspects of 
the mainstream world that he/she genuinely liked, while 
simultaneously making him/her aware of how the genuine 
gratifications of the cult can be obtained in the 
mainstream world.

Family members' growing understanding of the mind-control 
process should be used to teach them how to subtly and 
tactfully increase the cultist's awareness of cult-based 
recoil.  One mother, for example, while visiting her 
daughter living in squalid conditions in an Eastern-based 
religious group, feigned an innocent curiosity about a 
beautiful house on the hill (where the leader lived).  In 
so doing, she succeeded in making her daughter more aware 
of the discrepancy between the leader's and followers' 
living conditions without angering or frightening her and 
precipitating a defensive suppression of thoughts critical 
of the leader.

The mental-health professional can play a special role in 
helping families understand the cultist's recoil from the 
mainstream world.  Sometimes this recoil results from 
unmanaged developmental problems such as vocational 
confusion.  Sometimes it results from deep-rooted 
psychological problems.  When mainstream recoil is strong, 
cultists may tend to stay in their groups even if they are 
unhappy, for the solution--leaving and going back to their 
old problems--is more frightening than the problems 
engendered by cult affiliation.  In these cases, it is 
important to be aware of the cultist's psychological 
history in order to offer families advice on how to 
increase the cultist's confidence that he/she can learn to 
manage mainstream-based problems.

                   Post-Cult Adjustment

Many cultists experience considerable difficulty when they 
leave their groups.  Some who have spent years in a group 
may suffer from "maturational arrest," that is, their 
psychological development may lag many years behind their 
chronological age.  Others return to old psychological 
problems that had merely been placed in storage during 
their time in the cult.  Many experience symptoms directly 
related to the cult experience such as the dissociation 
ex-cultists call "floating."  Psychological reactions 
include depression, guilt, anger, anxiety, bitterness, and 
a periodic resurgence of the desire to return to the 
illusory security of the group.

Mental health professionals can help families deal with 
these difficulties by making them realize that their 
problems don't necessarily end when the cultist leaves the 
group and returns home.  Although professionals can help 
by providing therapy to the former cultist, family members 
must provide the day-to-day support ex-cultists need as 
they try to get their lives in order.

                        References

Anderson, S., & Zimbardo, P.  (1984).  On resisting social 
influence.
        Cultic Studies Journal, 1 (2), 196-220.
Andres, R., & Lane, J.  (Eds.).  (1988).  Cults & 
consequences:  The
        definitive handbook.  Los Angeles:  Commission on 
Cults & Missionaries, Community Relations 
Committee, Jewish Federation Council of Greater 
Los Angeles.
Clark, J.G. (1979).  Cults.  Journal of the American 
Medical Association,
        242, 179-181.
Clark, J.G., Langone, M.D., Schecter, R.E., & Daly, R.C.B.  
(1981).
        Destructive cult-conversion:  Theory, research, 
and treatment.  Weston (MA):  American Family 
Foundation.
Conway, F., & Siegelman, J.  (June, 1982).  Information 
disease.  Science
        Digest.
Friedman, D.X.  (1986).  Psychiatric epidemiology counts.  
Archives of
        General Psychiatry, 41, 931-933.
Galanter, M.  (1989).  Cults:  Faith, healing, and 
coercion.  New York:
        Oxford University Press.
Hassan, S.  (1988).  Combatting cult mind control.  
Rochester (VT):  Park
        Street Press.
Langone, M.D.  (1983).  Family Cult Questionnaire:  
Guidelines for
        professionals.  Weston (MA):  American Family 
Foundation.
Lifton, R.J.  (1961).  Thought reform and the psychology 
of totalism.
        New York:  Norton.
Maron, N.  (1988).  Family environment as a factor in 
vulnerability to
        cult involvements.  Cultic Studies Journal, 5 (1), 
23-43.
Ross, J.C., & Langone, M.D.  (1989).  Cults:  What parents 
should know.
        New York:  Carol Publishing Group.
Sirkin, M.I., & Grellong, B.  (1988).  Cult vs. non-cult 
Jewish families:
        Factors influencing conversion.  Cultic Studies 
Journal, 5 (1), 2-23.
Schein, E.  (1961).  Coercive persuasion.  New York:  
Norton.
Singer, M.T. (1986).  Group psychodynamics.  Merck Manual, 
fifteenth
        edition, Psychiatry Section.  Rahway (NJ):  Merck, 
Sharp, & Dohme.
West, L.J., & Singer, M.T.  (1980).  Cults, quacks and the
        nonprofessional psychotherapies.  In H.I. Kaplan, 
A.M. Freedman, & B.J. Sadock (Eds.), Comprehensive 
textbook of psychiatry, III.  Baltimore:  Williams 
and Wilkens.



            Counseling Cult-Impacted Students

     Lorna Goldberg, ACSW and William Goldberg, ACSW

When a college counselor is approached to help a student 
with a cultic involvement, effective response will depend 
upon the stage of cult involvement of the student.  The 
counselor may be approached during the initial recruitment 
of the cultist, during the active stage of cult 
involvement, or after the student has decided to leave the 
group.  Since the student is likely to be in a different 
frame of mind in each of these situations, each requires a 
different combination of strategies.

                   Initial Recruitment

First, a counselor may be approached by a student who is 
uncertain about spending a weekend with a cultic group or 
who is considering joining such a group.  The most 
important intervention, in this case, is to break the 
momentum of the organization's recruiting strategy by 
helping the student to postpone his/her decision.  The 
student's enthusiasm and desire to find an idealistic path 
should be acknowledged, but the counselor should model an 
appropriately questioning attitude.  Has the student 
researched the track record of the organization in 
question or relied on the veracity of the recruiter for 
this information?  Has the student spoken to individuals 
who are former members to gain their perspective on why 
they left?

It may be helpful to point out to the student similarities 
in the recruiting process and the student's experiences in 
other high-pressure sales situations.  The dynamics are 
the same, except that, in this case, the sales person is 
trying to sell the customer an idea rather than a product.  
Remind the student that just as a wise consumer doesn't 
rely on the salesperson for all information on a product, 
a wise consumer of ideas shouldn't rely solely on a 
proselytizer.

Remember that the student would not approach you for 
guidance on this issue unless he/she felt some discomfort 
about joining a group.  Your role is to help the student 
bring these healthy cautionary feelings to the surface.

Organizations such as the American Family Foundation, the 
Cult Awareness Network, and the International Cult 
Education Program can provide you and the student with 
valuable information on specific groups.  FOCUS, the 
national organization of former cult members, can also be 
helpful.  Telephone calls to colleagues at other colleges 
and universities who may have had experience in dealing 
with this particular group may also be enlightening.

                    Active Involvement

The student may approach the couselor while in the active 
stage of cult involvement.  Although during this stage the 
counselor is more likely to be approached by the student's 
friend, roommate or family than the student him/herself, 
the student may recognize that something is wrong and seek 
help from a trusted professional.

In this situation, the counselor must, of course, first 
deal with the issues the student is presenting.  As the 
counselor gains the student's trust, the cult's tenets 
which are causing problems for the student can be 
discussed.  The counselor's attitude toward the cult 
should be respectful but questioning (as opposed to 
critical) of the basic premises upon which the cult's 
philosophy is based.  For example, the counselor may point 
out that philosophers and theologians have struggled for 
centuries over the issues which the cult leader claims to 
have resolved once and for all.  The cult leader is not 
the first in history to have made these claims, and most 
of the others have been proven to be false prophets.  How 
does the student know that this individual has THE ANSWER?  
If the student is following his/her gut feeling, ask if 
his/her gut feelings have ever been wrong.  How will the 
student know when this group is no longer meeting his/her 
needs?  What will the signs be?  If the student learns 
something that casts a different light on the subject, 
does he/she have the strength to admit a mistake was made?

The counselor might ask the student if he/she would be 
willing to speak with someone who has left this 
organization or who knows more about it and can offer a 
different perspective.  If the student insists upon first 
checking with the group's leadership, the counselor should 
say that this is an excellent opportunity because it will 
help the student see how much integrity and openness the 
group has.  The counselor can point out that any open 
organization encourages its members to explore ideas and 
possibilities; only a group with something to hide would 
tell people they will be harmed by hearing negative things 
about it.  By framing the issue in this manner the 
counselor helps the student to question the group's 
motivations if, indeed, he/she has been told not to speak 
to a so-called "backslider."

The counselor should attempt to keep the lines of 
communication open with the cultist even if they disagree 
about an issue.  As long as they continue to engage in a 
dialogue, there is a chance the cultist can be helped.  
Focus on the group's methods, not its ideology.  For 
example, it is not wise to engage in a discussion of 
interpretations of scripture when an individual has joined 
a Bible cult unless the counselor is a Biblical scholar.  
Instead, the counselor should attempt to focus the 
dialogue on concrete issues and on observations of the 
group's methods.  The counselor should grant the student 
permission to be questioning and skeptical about these 
practices.

             When the Student Leaves a Group

The third situation in which the college counselor is 
likely to be approached for help in a cultic situation is 
after the student has decided to leave the group and is 
trying to resume his/her life and education.  The most 
important task at this point is for the student to see 
him/herself as someone who temporarily deviated from a 
career or educational path and not see him/herself 
primarily as a former cultist.  Although it is important, 
of course, for the student to deal with issues stemming 
from the past cult membership and residual feelings and 
symptoms (see Singer, "Coming out of the Cults" and 
Goldberg and Goldberg, "Group Work with Former Cultists") 
it is also important that the student not define 
him/herself solely as someone who made a terrible mistake 
by joining a cult.

The counselor can be helpful during this period by 
assisting the student to put the cult experience into 
perspective.  In most cases, cultists do not consciously 
decide to join a group.  Instead, they are tricked and 
manipulated into joining.  The counselor should help the 
student see that it is unfair to judge him/herself by 
facts which were not available when the student joined.

Many former cultists continue to see the cult and the cult 
leader as powerful and to fear retribution for leaving the 
cult.  It is helpful for the counselor to point out that 
the cult has only as much power as the former member is 
willing to relinquish to it.  Role-playing potentially 
tense situations such as meeting a cult member on campus 
can be a helpful technique at this time.

On the other hand, if the student is interested in 
speaking out publicly about the cult, this action should 
be encouraged.  It is a healthy way to feel active rather 
than passive, it reinforces the student's decision to 
leave, and it performs a public service.  In the authors' 
experience, it is almost always beneficial.  Of course, if 
the student prefers to maintain a low profile, that 
decision should also be respected.

Finally, the counselor can help former cultists by 
referring them to the FOCUS network of ex-members.  Peers 
who have lived through similar experiences can often offer 
more support, advice, and help than professionals.  It is 
very helpful for former cultists to learn that others have 
survived the experience and have moved on with their 
lives.

                        References

Lorna Goldberg and William Goldberg, "Group Work with 
Former Cultists,"
        Social Work, 27 (March, 1982)

Margaret Singer, "Coming Out of the Cults," Psychology 
Today, 12
        (January, 1979)
 
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