Not even one full year into his academic career at Eastern University and freshman Stuart Craig Bannon has already switched his major. Bannon declared his Missions and Anth. major long before making his housing deposit, despite meeting fierce resistance from Eastern’s administration that he consider thinking about his decision for a little while.
“My high school youth group took a short-term missions trip to Camden, NJ. I know what missions are about. The way I see it, adults these days are going to try to do everything they can to make me abandon my calling for a more ‘practical path.'” But when he actually started to take Missions/Anth. classes, they weren’t at all as advertised. “We didn’t talk about the right way to do missions a single time,” explained the freshman who now has absolutely no idea what to major in, “I have some good missions experience if people would just listen to me.”
Bannon said he first noticed things were up when he failed his first ethnographical assignment. “I was like, ‘Ethnography – sounds like an opportunity for a testimony to me,'” laments the ex-Missions and Anth. major. “But the professor attacked me for being ethnocentric. I mean, Jesus was ethnocentric, the world basically revolves around him.”
So if the Anth. department wouldn’t let Stuart imitate Jesus, he was going to find a different major. When asked about Bannon, peers in his Introduction to Cultural Anthropology class remembered him as a kid with the cool TOMS. “I didn’t mind his stories about Camden,” which freshman Anthropology major Steven Martyr explained were a recurring topic in every class, “I mean, they were kind of interesting I guess.”
Bannon’s friends have said that he is indeed signed up for classes next fall and has decided to focus on getting his general education requirements out of the way until he gets a better idea or the Anth department entirely reforms itself.
Shane Witzer 
Hannah Bonanducci