The Madison-based Freedom from Religion Foundation announced the United States Department of Education will immediately cut off all grants to the Alaska Christian College Monday. The department's decision comes after the foundation filed a lawsuit last spring for separation of church and state violations.
Derek Gaubatz, the ACC's attorney and only authorized spokesperson, said the college will seek a reversal of the department's decision and contended his client never allotted any government money to religious purposes.
"The school is seeking funding only for non-religious activities," Gaubatz said. "It's certainly true that there are some religious components that go on there, but the school is not seeking funding for those."
However, FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor contends this is practically impossible. She cited the investigative report from the education department that a single encyclopedia in the school's library as the only non-religious object on campus.
"It is really a hoot because there's nothing secular about the school," Gaylor said. "It's a church denomination school and they should be raising money from this from their flock, from their congregation."
According to its web site, the ACC is "thankful for a great group of 30 students from all across America including two from the Lower 48." But Gaubatz said the two-year school's fundamental secular mission is to prepare disadvantaged Alaskan students for a university education.
"[Their students come] from schools in bush village Alaska. … There's not a quality education in that type of environment, [and] there's also rampant problems of sexual abuse, alcoholism and drug abuse and high suicide rates," Gaubatz said.
High school graduates who come from these backgrounds and go straight to the University of Alaska-Anchorage routinely fail out because they do not have the programs necessary to succeed, he added.
"The culture shock for these kids is tremendous," Gaubatz said. "[ACC] provides them with basic life skills to help them make that transition."
The transition, Gaylor contends, is merely a form of "colonial racism." She said the college is a missionary whose sole intent is to evangelize its students and recruit them under lies of increased college preparedness.
"I'm sure they recruited some of these students under the pretext of getting them into college," she said. "It's such an insult to the students that are going there."
According to Gaylor, the college managed to secure a grant by telling the congressional delegation their program would help native Alaskans get into an accredited college — an assertion Gaylor dismisses based on the content of the college curriculum.
"I don't think you can even call this an education," she said. "These are students who can't get into college. How is a Bible certificate going to help them get into college?"
Gaubatz dismissed Gaylor's accusations as "propaganda" and said statistics on ACC graduates continuing education are not reliable, considering the school was founded just four years ago.
University of Wisconsin political science professor Donald Downs said while the government can fund religious colleges, the funding must be applied toward non-religious studies.
"The Supreme Court has upheld construction grants and grants for secular kinds of things that go to [religious institutions]," Downs said. "The government can't favor religion [and] if the government just wanted to fund non-religious schools the government could do that but the government doesn't have to do that under the First Amendment."
Because the education department's report said the ACC did not have "adequate safeguards to separate clearly … inherent religious activities from the secular activities" and noted participation in the religious activities was not voluntary, Downs said the education department was justified in not funding the college.
