The other day, as especially intent readers will recall, I wrote a post about Noah Riner, a senior at Dartmouth and the president of the College’s Student Assembly. This past Tuesday at Convocation, the formal event marking the beginning of the Dartmouth academic year, Riner gave a speech on the importance of character. In the course of this speech Riner mentioned–brace yourself–Jesus. An excerpt:

Character has a lot to do with sacrifice, laying our personal interests down for something bigger. The best example of this is Jesus. In the Garden of Gethsemane, just hours before his crucifixion, Jesus prayed, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” He knew the right thing to do. He knew the cost would be agonizing torture and death. He did it anyway. That’s character.

The result of these remarks? Young Mr. Riner has spent the balance of this week finding himself roundly (and pompously) denounced. A vice president of the Student Assembly resigned, calling Riner’s remarks “reprehensible.” A petition protesting Riner’s remarks was circulated. And The Dartmouth, one of the student newspapers, editorialized against him.

If you’d like a neat case study on campus double standards–last year, the president of the Student Assembly used Convocation to rail against drug laws, eliciting, as far as I can tell, not a peep of protest–you can read about the travails of Noah Riner by looking at the website of the Dartmouth Review (look for the item titled “Controversy Surrounds Riner Speech”) and at Dartblog, the website of a sensible (and articulate) Dartmouth undergrad (look for the item titled “Frozen in Faith”).