Through a pandemic and a restructuring of on-campus spiritual life, students leading Veritas have needed to balance different visions for what the club is and what it could be.
From its conception, Veritas functioned uniquely among clubs, with an advisory council and a large endowment. But over the years, the way the university managed Veritas changed structurally, giving students the keys to shape it to be what they wanted.
But after the COVID-19 pandemic, students and staff differed on the purpose of the club. Within these differences, conflicts emerged that fundamentally impacted the direction of the club.
Regardless, a range of people at Pepperdine, from current students to alumni, to staff, said they value the club.
“Veritas — it offers a unique perspective that other campus ministries don’t,” Chancellor of Pepperdine Sara Jackson said. “I think it has a very unique niche, and I think a lot of people don’t understand that.”
What Veritas is
The Student Organizations Handbook defines clubs as a group of 10 or more students, officially recognized by the Office of Student Activities, who “voluntarily gather for a common purpose.” Departments such as the Office of Intercultural Affairs (ICA) oversee clubs, and specific faculty members advise clubs.
Some of the clubs are overseen by the Hub for Spiritual Life and are designated as Student-Led Ministries (SLMs). Despite this special designation, these are still clubs, which gain funding and are under the policies of the Inter-Club Council (ICC) and Student Affairs.
The Hub inherited some of the SLMs when it opened in 2021, while creating others in the years following. Veritas is one of the former.
Although it is unclear when Veritas began on campus, the first Forum took place in 2009, according to previous Graphic reporting.
Veritas means “truth” in Latin. The SLM web page describes it as “a student-led ministry committed to pursuing truth through conversation. We welcome people of all backgrounds so that we can encounter truth together.” Among the organization’s mottos is “Seek Truth.”
People familiar with Pepperdine may recognize the name Veritas from several places. Perhaps they are aware of Veritas Yoga, a studio in the Malibu Country Mart. This studio is not connected to Pepperdine’s Veritas club, which puts on the Forum every spring, nor is it connected to the national Veritas organization.
Veritas is a discussion-based club that holds conversations regarding a variety of philosophical questions through a Christian lens.
The club is also known for the Forum it hosts every year, where they bring in a notable speaker who gives a talk on a topic related to the Veritas mission, with a Q&A session that follows.
Veritas is for the student who may or may not have been raised Christian or was exposed to the Christian faith who has serious questions about Jesus’ godhood, scripture’s authenticity and creation, Jackson said.
As a club, it is connected to the Religion and Philosophy Division, Jackson said.
Several of the professors on its advisory council were from that division, according to a document sent to the Graphic.
Pepperdine started its chapter of Veritas with an active advisory committee comprised of donors, parents and faculty who funded guests, their airfare, along with food and giveaways, Jackson said. A fund honorarium also exists.
Planning the Forum’s speaker gradually transferred over to the student Veritas Club, Jackson said.
Veritas before 2022
Veritas was brought onto campus by a group of parents and donors interested in its mission, including Deanne and John Lewis, the latter of which is a member of the Board of Regents, Jackson said. They saw Francis Collins give a talk at CalTech and were inspired to bring the club to Pepperdine.
The club exists for the sake of discussing difficult theological issues that arise during the academic study of religion and philosophy.
“They [the parents] just had a heart for the student who was seeking and struggling,” Jackson said.
Initially, a large, active committee of faculty, parents, students and administrators funded and organized the Forums. Part of this was done through the creation of an endowment.
Jonathan Koch confirmed he is the current and only faculty adviser of the club.
“Then it morphed into the students really forming a club and taking ownership, which was what we wanted,” Jackson said. “It was completely grassroots of students owning it and choosing what they felt like would be the best topic and format for the student body that year.”
One of the students who joined and participated in Veritas was Seaver alum Zachary Coleman (‘22). Coleman said he went to Veritas his first year, served on the executive board his second and served as co-president for his last two years at Pepperdine before he graduated in 2022.
“When I joined Veritas, it was because a lot of the people I aspired to [be like] were in Veritas,” Coleman said.
But there was also an established community with a different temperature of conversation.
“A lot of the discussions were very, I would say, cold and maybe kind of insensitive,” Coleman said. “Very intellectual and not very heartfelt.”
But, as with many student organizations, leaders of Veritas had no choice but to change how the club functioned during the pandemic, due to generally low attendance on Zoom, according to Coleman.
“It was primarily me and the other leadership and maybe like one to two actual members that would consistently go,” Coleman said. “What I will say is that professors were very enthusiastic to participate in that year.”
In club meetings that year, a professor would give a talk and the attendees would discuss it, Coleman said. Coming back after the pandemic, the style of the conversations changed due to the nature of the group.
“In my senior year — just because of the different group we had — we had a lot of deeper, more heartfelt discussions,” Coleman said. “So that was kind of an interesting change that I thought was unexpected, but I think was good for the group.”
Post-pandemic, the numbers of attendees consistently ranged from 10 to 25 per session, including leadership, multiple sources said.
During the pandemic, the way the Forum was managed gradually changed. This change coincided with the creation of the Hub for Spiritual Life.
“When I was a freshman and sophomore the student leadership pretty much planned the whole thing for the Veritas Forum, or at least most of it,” Coleman said. “And then, when I was a senior, we basically didn’t plan any of it. Like we did some minor logistics things.”
When the school returned to in-person activity, the students did not pick either the speaker or the date of the Forum, Coleman said. It is unclear why this change of management occurred as it did.
At the end of Coleman’s tenure as co-president, he said he recommended Gabriel Claypool to the Hub to be the next president of Veritas. Claypool was an active participant in the club.
Claypool invited a friend, Alex McAvoy, to join, because he could not do the presidential role himself, Claypool said.
Its executive board shrunk from four to two at the end of 2021-2022 academic year, likely due to the small size of the club.
Leadership in Veritas in the 2022-2023 Academic Year
Now alumni of Seaver College, McAvoy (‘24) and Claypool (‘24) became co-presidents of Pepperdine’s Veritas chapter in the fall semester of 2022. It was a personal undertaking for them and, since the club had very few members during that time, they were interested in trying to lead the club in case it could gain traction.
The club nominated them because they were among the very few people who actually showed interest in the club at that time, Claypool said.
As co-presidents, McAvoy and Claypool worked to grow the Veritas meetings. During this time, their team grew to handle the changing load of responsibilities as more people attended.
“Down the line, when people started coming to the meetings we would get maybe like 10, 15, almost 20 people, which, from when we started, was incredible to see the growth,” McAvoy said.
At the beginning of the year, McAvoy and Claypool were the only members of the executive board for Veritas. Later, they brought on students Justin Holtsnider (‘24) and then first-year Ayva Kacir, who has since transferred, according to Claypool.
However, sometime during the early months of their leadership, Claypool and McAvoy said they learned that there was an endowment for Pepperdine’s Veritas Forums. It is unclear how they learned about the endowment. The Veritas team worked with the help of staff to access those funds to help the club.
As of October 6, 2022, the principal total of the endowment was over $100,000, according to documents sent to the Graphic.
But the endowment was in a stock account and only a very limited percentage was available to the students per year, Claypool said.
The endowment was stored in the Office of the President, rather than the Hub for Spiritual Life, according to Claypool.
The stipulations on the endowment are broad, as the language said the endowment is meant to cover the cost associated with the Veritas Forum, Son said. While the club uses some of the money to help with food and marketing for the club sessions, the majority of it goes to the Forum.
Before they gained access to the funds, there was not a strong relationship between Veritas and the Hub, according to Claypool.
“This whole time, spiritual Hub didn’t have really anything to do with us,” Claypool said. “Since we were so small, they didn’t care.”
During this time, then-Director of Student Ministries Cameron Gilliam oversaw the SLMs, and worked with Nicole Son, who now oversees them. Pepperdine no longer employs Gilliam.
“They [staff members from the Hub] started checking up on the meetings all the time, checking up on us constantly, but that was only after we started uncovering all the funds,” Claypool said.
Deeming Veritas a SLM was not something that either Claypool or McAvoy necessarily approved of, according to them. Opposing visions were among their reasons.
“They were trying to resuscitate things, remove it, remove the nature of Veritas and the purpose of Veritas from being an academically driven, philosophically driven force that is just supposed to cultivate questions and thinking about the world around us,” McAvoy said. “It’s not a ministry.”
Both Claypool and McAvoy were Philosophy majors. During their tenure, the Instagram handle for Veritas’ page labeled it as “Pepperdine’s Christian Philosophy Club.”
Despite those opposing visions, there was not initially animosity between the student leaders and the Hub, according to McAvoy.
“I was so enthusiastic about starting off with the Hub, because at the same time I also had a leadership position with the Catholic Student Association,” McAvoy said.
But over time, McAvoy said she felt her Catholicism was out of place within the Hub, which leans non-denominational.
“They were all kind of doubtful of us, or hostile toward us, because we had these faith backgrounds that they didn’t necessarily agree with and weren’t really compatible with the ministry that they were trying to put out there,” McAvoy said.
Feeling out of place did not help calm tensions between the student leaders and staff. Other complications arose when the club’s Vice President attempted to plan an event other than the Forum.
Claypool and McAvoy brought on Justin Holtsnider later on in the school year. Along with helping plan events and participating in the club, he also wanted to establish a large-scale event called the Agora.
“We were taking students back into the time of ancient Greece, where they could discuss with leaders or thought leaders of our day in a very open and philosophical dialogue,” Holtsnider said.
In light of that intention built on Ancient Greek dialogues, Holtsnider named the event “the Agora,” which means “gathering place.”
In what would have been a multi-day event, Holtsnider reached out to and hoped to bring many popular speakers, including William Lane Craig, Jordan Peterson, Robert Barron, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Alex O’Conner and Richard Dawkins.
But due to the high-profile nature of many of these speakers, the venue, and other costs, the price for the event skyrocketed.
“We were looking at about a million dollars in the end that needed to be raised,” Holtsnider said.
But as he approached both the national Veritas organization and the Hub with the event, both groups met Holtsnider with opposition, since they were doubtful of the Agora.
“The reason that was officially given was that it was too controversial, and it wasn’t something Pepperdine would be interested in,” Holtsnider said.
Due to the costs and his connection to Veritas, Holtsnider wanted to use the endowment funds, though the Hub would not let him access those. The event never happened.
Another complication occurred in concern to compensation for the club’s presidents.
Generally, club presidents are not paid for their work with the club. This was also true of Veritas, where Coleman and later presidents were not paid for the work.
However, Hub staff members were in conversation with McAvoy about how she would get paid for her role in Veritas, according to emails McAvoy sent to the Graphic. These emails include confusion around the use of Pepperdine Work Program (PWP) and Federal Work Study (FWS), and about which ones applied to McAvoy.
“At the end of the day, we couldn’t get paid,” McAvoy said.
The strained relationship eventually cracked after the Forum, which was held on March 10, 2023, when it was time to select the executive board for the next year.
After what was perceived by McAvoy to be a largely fruitless meeting regarding leadership, she met with a Hub staff member who told her that they believed she would not be a good shepherd of the faith, McAvoy said.
But McAvoy felt this was unfair, since she did not see shepherding as a part of the role of Veritas president.
“I never saw myself as a minister or as a shepherd,” McAvoy said. “I’m not here to propagate the Word of God. I’m here to foster intellectual conversations about the concept of a God.”
Regarding McAvoy’s positions in both the Catholic Student Association (CSA) or Veritas, the Hub offered her a choice between either one, but said she could not stay in both, Claypool said.
ICC’s Club policy and Hub’s SLM policy differ slightly in regards to whether a student can be a president in one or more organizations.
For ICC, a student can be a president or on the executive board of two different clubs, according to an email from Danielle Minke, director of Student Activities.
Regarding the Hub’s clubs, a student cannot be the president of two different SLMs, but can be on the executive board of two different SLMs, according to Son.
The choice to recommend leadership of SLMs does fall under the purview of the Hub.
McAvoy, though still interested in participating on the executive board of both clubs, was not planning on being President in both, according to McAvoy.
Due to broken trust and her not feeling as if she was being shepherded, McAvoy said she decided to decline leadership in both clubs.
How the Hub treated McAvoy and the options that they offered her heavily impacted Claypool’s likewise decision to leave Veritas.
“It’s like, well, she worked hard to get all of this,” Claypool said. “Like, she worked, worked, and everybody saw it.”
Holtsnider succeeded them, but after his departure, Andrew Morgan (‘24) and Julie Tingleff (‘24) were co-Presidents of the Club. They were succeeded by the current President, Madison Luc, who is a previous Graphic staff member.
Veritas currently
Some of Pepperdine’s staff members, including Jackson and Son, said they are impressed with the current leaders of Veritas.
“But I feel like the leaders, they’ve just done a really great job of kind of talking about those difficult things,” Son said. “We need to do things just with so much grace and in a very constructive way, and also just giving a lot of space for different students to share what they thought about it.”
They also took an active role in planning the Forum, which started as early as last summer, Son said.
The Veritas Club held The Forum on March 18, and it focused on Christian friendship, according to the Pepperdine Veritas website.
Veritas has also seen its best attendance in years, Son said.
Several people said they are pleased with its recent success, including Chancellor Jackson, who considers Veritas very important.
“It’s [Veritas] just a beautiful combination of Christian mission and academic excellence,” Jackson said. “Pepperdine needs it.”
___________________
Follow the Graphic on X: @PeppGraphic
Contact Eliot Cox via email: eliot.cox@pepperdine.edu
