When Mitt Romney stands up at Liberty University Saturday to deliver the school’s commencement address, he’s unlikely to be faced with the kind of long, floppy hair that reportedly so angered him in high school.
Liberty, founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, is known in politics as the place Republican candidates concerned about their connection to evangelicals go to make amends. John McCain famously shunned the school during his 2000 campaign, only to cozy up to it when he ran for president the second time. Romney, despite having all but locked up the nomination, still has to prove his bona fides to some on the evangelical right, who remain wary of his past rhetoric on gay rights and abortion.
Outside of politics, Liberty is associated with far-right conservative evangelical Christianity. Fallwell once said “pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians” were partly responsible for Sept. 11 (he later apologized). The school he founded has strict rules governing the interaction of the sexes (students are fined for entering the bedroom of a member of the opposite sex either on or off campus), media consumption (watching an R-rated movie results in disciplinary action) and attire — including hair style.
According to a copy of the school handbook, “The Liberty Way”, shared with TPM by People for the American Way, the rules governing hair on Liberty’s campus are very strict. From the rules for men:
Hair and clothing styles related to a counterculture (as determined by the Student Affairs Deans’ Review Committee) are not acceptable. Hair should be cut in such a way that it will not come over the ears, collar or eyebrows at any time. Ponytails for men are unacceptable.
This might hit a little too close to home for Romney, who is in the midst of shaking off a Thursday Washington Post report that detailed an incident from Romney’s youth in which he cut off a fellow student’s hair while attending the tony Cranbrook prep school in Michigan.
John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection.
Romney, with a gang of others, eventually held Lauber down and cut what could be considered a “counterculture hairstyle” off. Lauber later returned to the school “with his shortened hair back to its natural brown.”
Update: It’s not clear from the rules what kind of haircut counts as “counterculture.” Apparently mohawk makes the list of acceptable locks, as this official Liberty University video shows:
This post has been updated.
