A lesbian couple attending Pepperdine isn’t what one would expect from a conservative, Christian university. Yet, Sarah Neiman and Caleigh Howard defied the odds, found each other and fell in love despite numerous obstacles.
“My love for Caleigh isn’t defined by traditional gender norms,” Neiman said. “I don’t love her because she’s a girl, I love her for the person that she is. When I’m with her and talking to her and loving her, it feels exactly like what I’m meant to do.”
From same-gender relationships to abroad romances to high school sweethearts, people of Pepperdine shared their love stories and told how being surrounded by the Christian faith has influenced the diversity and uniqueness of their relationships.
Freshman Mikaela Clark hasn’t been in a relationship since the beginning of the school year, and she confirmed the misconception of Pepperdine’s undiversified dating culture.
“I don’t mean necessarily racially, but relationships at Pepperdine are different, because people are expected to date the person they’re going to marry,” she said. “They’re not necessarily looking to casually date.”
Clark said she has seen very little romantic relationship diversity on campus so far. She said this is because students don’t feel open to experimenting with their traditional ideas of relationships.
From hometown to college town
Junior Helen Wu has been in a relationship with her boyfriend since her junior year of high school. Both she and her boyfriend identify as Church of Christ and chose to attend Pepperdine as undergraduates. She said her relationship is definitely similar to one you would expect at a Christian university.
Wu said her relationship grew and became more centered on Christ after coming to Pepperdine.
“A lot of maturing happened, a lot of independence happened, and college was a good thing for us,” she said.
Wu said she expects to be engaged to her boyfriend by the end of her senior year, but she thinks the concept of “ring by spring” is silly.
“I think since my boyfriend and I have been together for four years now,” she said, “it’s acceptable for us to start talking about marriage.”
Wu said the point of dating is to eventually reach marriage.
“We are called to find a partner in life and to encourage each other toward Christ,” she said. “Marriage is two people encouraging each other to get closer to God, and I think as a result you become closer to each other.”
Wu currently leads a student-led Club Convocation at Pepperdine about Christ in relationships, and how having patience in conflicts with your partner creates maturity.
“Faith affects how we react to different situations together, and learning how to react in a Christ-like way to situations that are going to happen in a relationship is important,” she said.
An abroad romance: The Pepperdine dream
Visiting Professor of Communication Elizabeth Navarro met her husband as an undergraduate while they studied abroad together at Pepperdine’s Florence campus. While in Florence, she said faith had a much bigger presence in her relationship because the group she went with was very spiritual and tight-knit.
However, after Florence, Navarro said faith didn’t have as much of a presence in her relationship.
“I don’t think it was the Christian influences that drove us to take our relationship to the next level and to necessarily be together,” she said. “I think it was more chemistry and the fact that it worked out for us. I know that’s not the usual Pepperdine answer.”
Navarro said that at 19 years old, she and her husband weren’t looking for a relationship when they met.
“I think that actually made our relationship stronger, because marriage wasn’t the goal of going to Florence or going to Pepperdine,” she said.
While she was a student at Pepperdine, Navarro said she noticed a dichotomy between the urgency to get married and the repulsion of the idea of marriage.
“My friends were happier being single, and my husband and I were definitely the exception to that belief,” she said. “My other friends were definitely not looking for their ‘ring by spring.’ We were kind of the anti-‘ring by spring’ group of people.”
Counseling and love coincide
Dusty Breeding, youth minister at the University Church of Christ, often speaks at on-campus Convocations and student-led worship events about relationships.
Breeding said he met his wife while they were both undergraduate students at Pepperdine. They were doing charity work in Nairobi, Kenya when their relationship began.
“Over the course of our time in Kenya, we just fell in love,” Breeding said.
Breeding said they went to the Counseling Center when their relationship first began for couple’s therapy before they began talking about marriage.
“We both sort of knew this relationship was different than anything either of us had experienced before,” he said. “We started going to the Counseling Center here at Pepperdine just to help us think through our relationship.”
Breeding said they went to the Counseling Center for advice instead of going to their friends because they wanted someone objective to advise them about their relationship.
“We wanted a professional who was skilled in walking people through things, and who could talk to us about our relationship and what we should be doing,” he said.
Breeding credits the Counseling Center with the success of his marriage.
“Since then, my wife and I always suggest to couples that if this is getting serious, even if you’re not engaged, do some serious relationship counseling,” he said.
Being a Christian and being gay
Neiman and Howard said, as a same-sex couple, they don’t feel comfortable publicizing their relationship.
“I feel like a lot of people would look down on us and we would be judged harshly because people wouldn’t be open to getting to know the real us because of the sexual orientation label,” Neiman said. “And I feel the need to hide because of this. Those of us in same-sex relationships are under a microscope because of the nature of our relationships.”
Neiman said she has encountered numerous opinions of homosexuality, as well as a lot of conservative views she feels the need to be cautious around.
“Though I do understand the religious commitments Pepperdine has, I also think the Bible teaches acceptance,” Howard said. “The general attitude toward homosexuality is also changing, and Pepperdine should adjust to that.”
Pepperdine takes a stance against LGBT organizations at the school in its student handbook: “Pepperdine has denied recognition to other LGBT student organizations with broader missions that do not clearly support Pepperdine’s affirmation of the traditional sexual ethic, since official recognition would imply to many that Pepperdine is endorsing and funding a position on sexuality inconsistent with Pepperdine’s Christian heritage.”
Out of Pepperdine’s 3,200 undergraduate students, campus demographics consist of a 60-percent female to 40-percent male ratio, according to the Office of Admission’s preliminary fall 2014 enrollment figures. Approximately 51 percent of those students identify themselves as Christian on their applications.
Breeding transferred twice before transferring to Pepperdine. The universities he attended prior were much more religious, “you need to get married before you graduate college” type of universities, he said.
“Sometimes I hear people talk around campus about the pressure at a Christian school to get married, but we didn’t know anyone who was doing that,” Breeding said. “We were ‘odd’ in our circle. This could be because I came from a place that emphasized (marriage) more severely.”
Breeding said Pepperdine is much different from the other schools he attended because students are much less serious about dating and more open to diversity in relationships.
As a Christian university, Pepperdine stands out when it comes to traditional relationships. But the diverse romantic culture on campus is not black and white, and there is a lot of gray area to be explored and learned from.
Rachel Ettlinger completed this story in Professor Wendy Fontaine’s spring 2015 Jour 241 class.
