elon university

Chris Knight's avatar
My book Keeping the Tryst has been out for a little over a month and a half now.  It’s been doing pretty well sales-wise.  Okay it’s NOT a bestseller by any stretch.  But enough people have been buying and reading it to make me pretty happy so far.  Maybe there will come to be some word of mouth and knowledge about it will spread around.
People are reading it.  And their comments have been rather kind.  One of my friends said that it’s a real page-turner that he’s barely been able to put down.  A number of people have praised its readability, saying that it doesn’t come across as a 500-some page volume.  I’ve also gotten good word about the design: it’s page color, the font size… so it’s something comfortable on the eyes.  Considering that I had to design everything about this book, hearing those things makes me smile.
...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Last week my alma mater, Elon University, announced that it was merging with Queens University over a hundred miles away in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Which was a proclamation that had me – and many others it seems – scratching their heads.  What exactly is Elon’s angle here?  The last time that Elon made any significant branching-out was the law school in Greensboro some years ago.  But that’s vastly different from wholesale engulfing another higher-learning institution.

Along with the seemingly unceasing construction that’s been going on for as long as I can remember (I graduated in 1999), it’s now coming inescapably apparent that Elon has a voracious appetite for real estate and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Current Elon student Alex Nettles has composed an extremely well-written, researched and articulated opinion piece that’s been published on Elon’s in-house news operation.  “The Elon Empire: Why the Queens University merger ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

To Christopher Schmidt:

I know where you are.  I know where you work.  For all you’re aware of I may even have your home address.

You really should be focused on your job right now instead of goofing off on Elon University’s Facebook page or looking at my website.

You aren’t much of anything, are you?  Just someone hiding behind your cellphone.  Or the keyboard of the library where you’re supposed to be employing whatever skills your “masters degree” (if you even have one) bestowed upon you.

Good Lord, I really am a better person than you, aren’t I?  Including in life experiences and even education.  Not all learning is done in a classroom or laboratory, or the Akron-Summit County Public Library in Ohio.  You’ve never seen the world.  You don’t know what it’s really like out there.  But I do.  I understand the human condition in ways you’ll never ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It’s ironic that this pertains to Elon University: the place where my real spiritual journey began while a student there almost thirty years ago.  At the time there was a considerable presence of evangelical Christians there.  There was InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and maybe a hundred people or more came together on Tuesday nights for that.  There were the small groups that met for Bible study and prayer throughout the campus during the week.  Associations like Baptist Student Union flourished.  And if you were a student who was looking for a place of earnest worship there was a church service called Elon Celebration that took place every Sunday morning at Whitley Auditorium.

It’s been a long time since I’ve visited the Elon campus, but I’ve heard stories.  About how the Christian presence is gone.  Oh, there is some marginal representation, but nothing that gets official recognition from the administration.  For that
...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

So, this past week a memory just popped into mind.  About something I had written a long time ago as a student at Elon.  Awhile back I discovered an online archive of every issue of The Pendulum, which was the college’s newspaper.  I’ve shared a few of the op-ed pieces I wrote for the paper already.

I don’t know why I found myself thinking of it but I went looking for it.  And lo and behold I not only found it, but I realized today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of its publication!

Maybe there is something at work, that such synchronicity happened right just now.

For many years at Christmas time I posted the text of this piece.  It was a holiday tradition for this blog.  But I haven’t done that in a long while.  Maybe this year would be a good occasion to bring that tradition back.

Well ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It’s been a truly fascinating journey for me these past few months after finding an online archive of The Pendulum, Elon University’s student newspaper.  I’m finding articles written by me that I had forgotten about.  I can really see the person I was then, and contrast him with the man who I am today.  There is a lot of growth there.  Some things changed in the intervening decades while others remained starkly the same.  I think my beliefs evolved, while staying true to the heart meat of my being.

So here’s my essay from The Pendulum‘s October 1st, 1998 issue… gadzooks that was twenty-five whole years ago!  Well, this one calls for some background.  A year and a half before this was published Joycelyn Elders – the former surgeon general under President Clinton – visited Elon and spoke one night.  And I was a hot-blooded American youth “full ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

 See?  I really do know how to write an op-ed piece that doesn’t honk off many readers!

This edition of Elon’s student newspaper The Pendulum came out right before spring break 1999.  I didn’t want to be on the cusp of that and deliver something that would be overly provocative.  There had been an article for Christmas a few months earlier and this new one needed to be on a happy note too.

So here it is, from two months before the premiere of Star Wars Episode I.  Note the special photo we used for the essay: me brandishing a toy lightsaber and wearing the helmet from a Darth Vader mask.  Click on the pic to enlarge and read!

 

...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Last month I stumbled on an online archive that has tons of issues of various newspapers going back many, many years.  Including The Pendulum: the student newspaper of Elon University.  Or at least it used to be.  I’ve been scrounging around Elon’s website and it seems that The Pendulum has gone defunct: a casualty of instant news, social media and streaming video.  I hate to see that happen to any newspaper, because there is a priceless value to be had on printed information chronicling a place and its people.  It is also a magnificent snapshot of the thoughts and ideas and values of those people.  I looked and I looked, but I didn’t see any opinion/editorial writing recently on Elon’s servers.  Having those gone is an immeasurable loss.

Well anyway, I previously found the first op-ed piece I wrote for The Pendulum, about abortion.  I hadn’t gone ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

The other night I was trying to locate something regarding my alma mater Elon University (though it was still “Elon College” when I was there).  During the search I came upon something truly wonderful: an archive of just about every issue of Elon’s weekly student newspaper The Pendulum.

I got involved in the The Pendulum early in my first semester at the school.  At first I was a reporter, writing articles about the new food court and elections in the town of Elon.  But increasingly I realized that I could be a journalist… but what I really wanted was to write opinion pieces.  I had already been writing letters to the region’s largest newspaper and more often than not they got published.  Carrying that passion to my college’s newspaper would be seriously putting myself out there, with immediate feedback when the issue hit the stands.  This was my true ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

During the four years I spent (of my seven year undergraduate career… ehh, family tradition you might say) at Elon, I was on the staff of the student newspaper The Pendulum.  First as a reporter but mostly as an op-ed writer.  It was a continuation of all the letters to the editor I had been sending the bigger newspapers.  I figured that being an essayist for my school’s paper would provide for constructive feedback.  Well, that and also having a more captive audience.
 
My first column was published in March of 1996.  And for the subject I chose abortion. Mainly, why it was destroying our capacity for the value of the human soul.  The heartmeat of the argument was that we were numbing ourselves to the sanctity of human life, and I kicked the piece off with a quote from Mother Teresa.  It was, I thought, a solid
...
Read more