Panel Studying Cult Recruiting at Schools
Washington Post, August 11 1999.
MARYLAND
Spurred by nervous parents, a legislative task force is examining reports that cults are recruiting at college campuses across Maryland.
No hard data exist on how many Maryland students join religious cults. The panel has commissioned a statewide survey of student advisers and campus officials.
Denny Gulick, a University of Maryland at College Park math professor who has been helping students deal with cults for 14 years, estimates that 50 to 100 of the campus’s more than 30,000 students are cult members.
So far, much of the evidence gathered by the task force has been anecdotal.
The panel is supposed to determine the extent of any problem and recommend what can be done by Sept. 30.
The General Assembly created the panel last year in response to parents who said the International Church of Christ, an evangelical group, had recruited their children at College Park.
