When students return from Easter break, there will be a major change at Cedarville. As of April 14, 2009, students will be allowed to wear jeans five days a week.

This change comes after a yearlong process involving current and prospective student polling as well as faculty and staff discussion. Dr. Carl Ruby, vice president of student life, led the movement for this dress code change.

"I feel a huge sense of personal responsibility for how we approach handbook changes," said Ruby. "One of Cedarville's greatest strengths is the culture that exists here.

My goal is to oversee a process where we are open to questioning and changing things that have been institutional preferences without hurting the culture or giving up positive things that set us apart institutionally. If we change too much, we can lose our institutional identity.  If we change too little, we can end up totally out of touch with positive aspects of the broader culture in which we exist."

Ruby emphasized that the Student Life Division wants to avoid "policies that keep good students from coming here, or unnecessarily annoy currents students-without adding educational or spiritual value." He also added that the university be "open to change in areas of institutional preferences, but change just a little bit at a time."

Current and potential CU students were very influential in making the decision to switch to jeans. "Surveys of current students, prospective students and parents of prospective students each preferred this change by over a two to one margin," said Ruby. "In fact, in a survey of prospective students who come for campus visits, 67 percent preferred a dress code that allowed jeans and 32 percent said this was an important factor to them in their college choice. We want to remove any obstacles that keep some students from considering Cedarville."

These percentages were taken into account throughout the decision making process. Ruby also said that this change would create "greater freedom of expression for students whose tastes are different from those traditionally encouraged by Cedarville" in order for CU to have "a culture that students love."

"In addition to being responsive to input from both current and prospective students," said Ruby, "this change also eliminates a strange distinction in our current policy which allows jeans of any other color than blue, but bans blue jeans except on Fridays."

The faculty and staff were also given the chance to share their opinions on the subject. There were many mixed views about the proposed change, but most faculty members supported it, providing that they could still require their students to wear appropriate professional attire when giving presentations. Based on feedback from faculty and staff members, two adjustments to the proposed rule change were made. Excluding Fridays, student will not be permitted to wear T-shirts, and they will also be prohibited from wearing torn or ragged jeans.

Another handbook change that will be going into effect for the 2009-2010 school year will deal with spiritual formation reports. Juniors and seniors will no longer be required to fill out these weekly reports. A new form will be created for upperclassmen to be submitted once each semester.

"This form has very little impact on student behavior," said Ruby, "especially among the upperclassmen who hopefully have stronger internalized motivation to engage in these disciplines."

Many students feel that the spiritual formation reports are intrusive. According to Ruby, more students complain about this form than just about anything else.

Underclassmen, however, will still be required to fill out the forms. "We have decided to continue to require freshmen and sophomores to fill out the form on a weekly basis as a means of communicating a sense of accountability."

"Students need to be moving toward internalized motivation," said Ruby. "I believe that students are more likely to internalize the values behind our rules if they believe that our rules are reasonable, and if they feel like they have some input into what our rules are."

There were three other proposed handbook changes that were not made. The first was to extend curfew by an hour. According to Ruby, "student safety was the main reason for not extending curfew till 2:00 a.m. Many expressed concern about a higher percentage of people on the road who have been drinking at 2:00 a.m."

There will also not be any changes made to the current chapel attendance policy. The proposed idea would have given students two additional chapel cuts, but also double the penalty for going over the limit.

The last item was a dress code change that would allow modest shorts to be worn during summer school. "This summer we will explore the matter further with students and with faculty who teach summer courses to determine if we should revisit this issue at a later time," said Ruby.