The following message was sent to the La Sierra University campus:

On Friday, June 10, Board Chair Ricardo Graham requested the resignations of Dr. Jeff Kaatz from his position as Vice President for University Advancement, Dr. Jim Beach from his position as Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, Dr. Gary Bradley from his part-time faculty position in the Biology Department, and Mr. Lenny Darnell from the Board of Trustees.

These resignations have been accepted and are effective immediately. Campus administration is unable, at this time, to offer any additional details regarding the decisions of these individuals.  Further information will be made available as appropriate.

A message from the University Relations department included the following:

Please understand these resignations have no connection to the biology controversy. There is also no connection with students.

La Sierra University’s President and Provost learned of the situation Friday afternoon. Since then, the administration continues to deal with the matter fully in accordance with internal University policies and our commitments as a Seventh-day Adventist University.

Bull shit. Complete and utter bullshit. In light of the on going controversy, I have a hard time imagining that Dr Bradley, the professor at the center of the current Adventist Inquisition, two administrators, and a board member being asked to resign by Pastor Richardo Graham could have had to do with anything but the evolution controversy.

He’s obviously been under a lot of pressure from the “brethern” to rid the university of this heritic. Kaatz, Beach, and Darnell must have just been sympathizers that had to be purged to try to put an end to the controversy.

The Western Association of Schools and Colleges already has concerns about denomination meddling. This just proves it.

To say that it is anything else is a lie.

UPDATE 04/13/11 11:40 PM MDT: If you dig through the comments on the Spectrum article at the link below there is an alleged email from Bradley explaining his side. According to the comment, the resignation was forced in part due to a recorded conversation in which Bradley and possibly the other three were drinking a little wine.

They weren’t getting drunk, they were sipping on a little wine.

As Bradly was not aware of nor consented to the recording, this is clearly illegal. If there is a law suit, and I sure hope there is, they would have to be careful to pick the right charge as courts tend to give religious institutions broad leeway in firing people for religious offences.

I still don’t think this was the real reason, but it was the easy way to save face with the church. I hope that WASC comes down hard on LSU over this.

Update 06/18/11 – More information has come out which you can find in part 6 of this series.

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If you haven’t already, you should probably read part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 of this series.

(Via Spectrum)