Bubbaworld

Richard Roberts has resigned as President and CEO of Oral Roberts University.

Roberts announced his immediate resignation in a letter to the ORU Board of Regents on Friday.

In his letter to the Board of Regents Roberts wrote, “I love ORU with all my heart. I love the students, faculty, staff and administration and I want to see God’s best for all of them.“.

That Richard Roberts would exit the role of President and CEO of ORU has been pretty much a given since the scandal first broke with the initial lawsuit.

Additional allegations and new lawsuits figuratively added more nails to the coffin of Roberts administration.

With the faculty in open revolt, students suing for the return of their tuition and local news media falling over itself for the next ORU ‘expose’, there was no doubt about the fate of Richard Roberts at the university which bears his father’s name. Roberts was as done as the Thanksgiving turkey and not nearly as well liked.

Undoubtedly supporters of “change” at ORU will welcome the exit of Richard Roberts and proclaim a “new day” for ORU amid high hopes for a bright future. Unfortunately, the university and the Roberts family are so intertwined that they can not survive without each other. They are like conjoined twins sharing a common heart and brain. No amount of surgery to separate them will permit either to survive and that is where ORU finds itself this holiday season.

While many will point to Richard Roberts as the cause of all of ORU’s problems, the fact is that ORU was and is “The House That Oral Built” and when it came to running his university, nothing happened at ORU without the blessing of Oral Roberts. The free spending and lavish lifestyle of which Richard Roberts stands accused dates back prior to Richards rise to the throne of ORU. The “sins” of which Richards stands accused are the same sins of which Oral Roberts should have been accused but by-in-large was not.

There was very little different at ORU under the administrations of Oral Roberts or son Richard Roberts. The apple does not fall far from the tree and we humans are creatures of habit, trained by our elders in their own ways, for both the better and the worse.

While the ORU ‘faithful’ may take joy in the departure of Richard Roberts from the helm of ORU, their celebration will be short lived, as ORU itself is in its final days.

Radical surgery on conjoined twins is sometimes like that…