California Bible college students claim they were confined, surveilled and made to do unpaid labor

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In 2018, emergency dispatchers received a strange call from a remote valley in Riverside County. The caller was a 22-year-old student who said that she had been unable to leave her rural college campus for months while she was forced to work without compensation. She said she lived there with 300 others, dispatch records show, and that barbed wire surrounded the school.

The location she called from matched the address of Olivet University — a Christian Bible school set against the San Jacinto Mountains near the high desert town of Anza. Its entrance is marked by a grove of olive trees, but the more than 900-acre gated campus isn’t visible from the street; visitors must make an appointment to enter.

For years, the university and the teachings of its founder have drawn students from around the world, mostly from east Asia, seeking an academic experience rooted in Christianity. The promise of a U.S. student visa and a scholarship combined to make an unbeatable opportunity. But instead of feeling the sense of freedom they hoped to encounter in America, students described an environment where they were under near-constant surveillance and stripped of their independence.


In interviews with The Times, and in a lawsuit filed this year against the university, its founder, former president and others, several former students and employees from Olivet University and its business described a big brother-like atmosphere on multiple campuses where administrators prevented adults from leaving, they said, and forced them to work, sometimes for free.

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The suit filed in California by four students, including the one who made the emergency call, said they were forced to work at least 40 hours a week doing tasks that included manual labor and gardening, and that their only outing was a weekly shopping trip to a grocery store — chaperoned by school employees. Any other plans to leave the campus required written permission, the suit said.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-09-20/bible-college-students-claim-they-couldnt-leave-freely-and-were-made-to-do-unpaid-labor