Master’s Marches to Different Drummer Without the Dance

To look at the main picture on the lead page of Wednesday’s Valley Sports section, a picture of Debbie DeLano with her arms around boyfriend Terry Sloan, you would think you were looking at an All-American couple.

To read the accompanying story, you might think you were looking at a couple of All-American sinners.

Sloan, a catcher for Master’s College, was considered by Coach John Zeller to be the best player on the squad. That was up until a week ago. Now, he’s no longer on the team, having withdrawn at the insistence of administration officials.

His crime?

He is accused of staying overnight in the same house with DeLano. Master’s College is a Christian institution that prohibits drinking, dancing and premarital sex.

“She told her parents,” Sloan says, “that she had been staying in the house and that I had been staying in the dorm, but I had been staying in the house and Debbie was staying with a girl in Reseda. She didn’t want her parents to worry about her staying in Reseda with this new girlfriend she had met three weeks before.”

At first, Sloan says, he told college officials the truth. But when one of them called DeLano’s mother in Washington and was told Debbie was living at the house, Sloan was made the villain.

Because his story wasn’t the same as that of a woman living more than a 1,000 miles away, Sloan was suspended from the team.

So, he says, he changed his story.

“I agreed to the story that we were in the same house together, not the same room,” Sloan says, “just so I could play baseball.”

It didn’t matter. Fine, college officials said, your stories coincide. Now you’re out for having her in the house.

“They did ask the landlady of the house and she said I wasn’t staying there,” DeLano says, “but they didn’t take her word for it.

“They hear rumors and take that for gospel. The pressure out there is too much. It’s a different world.”

DeLano, whose father is a pastor, attended Master’s College for about six weeks but withdrew, unhappy with the atmosphere.

“Most of the people there are supposed to be on a high pedestal,” Sloan says. “Some of the people try to outdo everyone else. Rumors, anything you do, you’re constantly being watched. It was rough.”

Sloan attended Master’s College because of Zeller. Both are from Tennessee.

“Terry was already on probation because of drinking and other things I don’t care to comment on,” Zeller says. “He knew the rules before getting here. I’m disappointed, but I wish the best for him. He’s a good guy. I don’t think anybody sees him as a bad guy.

“But you have to remember this is a private college. Kids choose to come here and when they do, they have to abide by the rules. We don’t force anybody to come here who doesn’t accept the administrative rules. Ninety-nine percent of the kids here--I’d say 99% of the athletes here--have no problems with the rules. I tell you, there are a lot of good kids out there with a Christian life style that doesn’t change by their coming here. Those are the kind of kids we try to recruit.”

Nobody is questioning the high standards at Master’s College. More power to those who want to and are able to discipline themselves. But freedom of religion is only one-tenth of the Bill of Rights.

The Fourth Amendment grants us freedom from unreasonable search and seizure and that right seems to have been trampled a bit by some overzealous protectors of the faith at the college.

Several students, according to Sloan, came over to his house at 3:30 in the morning to see if he and DeLano were together. The sexual gestapos searched the house but found nothing.

Sure, this is a private college. But even a private institution must follow the rules that govern the public at large. And one of those rules is that one is innocent until proved guilty. Sloan maintains he is innocent. Nobody has proved otherwise.

Besides, a police state has never been a very good method of controlling one’s soul. Two healthy young people who want to be more than friends are going to find a way. And all the pre-dawn raids in the world are not going to prevent them.

Preach your doctrine. Instill it in the minds of your students. Make them true believers through your teachings. If your cause is just, you’ll find followers. But to try to establish a doctrine through intimidation does justice to neither your followers nor your belief.

Faith in God is highly admirable. And faith in your fellow man isn’t bad either.