Never let it be said that university administrations don't protect their students. In early December Dartmouth College officials leapt into action to shield their students from a traumatic experience: exposure to Christian author C.S. Lewis.

If you know anything about Lewis — probably the most influential Christian author of the 20th century — you may think students would benefit from being exposed to his work. Well, tell Dartmouth.

Trouble started when the local branch of Campus Crusade for Christ prepared to send all Dartmouth freshmen a Christmas gift through campus mail — a copy of Lewis's classic book Mere Christianity, which presents his reasoned arguments on behalf of the Christian faith.

Campus Crusade had done the same thing last year, with virtually no complaints from students; after all, anyone who didn't want the book could simply throw it away. So no one expected any problems repeating the procedure this year. Members of the group gift-wrapped nearly 1,100 copies of the book, loaded them in 40 boxes and sent them to the Dartmouth mailroom for delivery.

But at the last minute on Dec. 2, Dean Scott Brown suddenly stopped the mailing. It seems a handful of Jewish students (grand total: six) had complained the previous year. Perhaps more influentially, so had a few campus clergy members.

"[The clergy] leaned on us hard not to send books to 'their' students," reports Chris West, director of Campus Crusade at Dartmouth — stressing that the ministers had repeatedly spoken of students as "theirs."

At a meeting Dec. 3, Brown reportedly told students they could not send the book to Jewish and non-Christian students.

But the restrictions quickly drew unfavorable media attention. The Dec. 4 edition of the local paper, the Valley News, featured the headline "College Limits Free Distribution of Lewis's book on Christianity." That same day, Dartmouth changed course and approved the mailing.

"When they saw that headline they beat a hasty retreat," West says. "That's not the kind of publicity they want. Public accountability made all the difference."

Brown claimed the whole matter was a misunderstanding: Dartmouth had never forbidden the mailing, he said, but merely asked for a delay to discuss it with religious leaders.

Not so, says West. "It's a complete falsehood. [Brown] did impose restrictions, in front of 25 students and a reporter who was sitting in the room."

Though Campus Crusade got its belated go-ahead, the group is likely to find other means of distributing the books as a peace gesture, such as setting up tables in cafeterias. But that doesn't mean they're happy about what happened — particularly where campus clergy are concerned.

West — who characterizes the clergy's actions as a "power play" — believes a new attitude is in order, one less concerned with protecting turf and more with spreading the Gospel.

"We're not a club," he stresses. "We're a movement. We want to respectfully influence the way people think about God."

One of the ironies of this case is that Brown, in justifying his actions, cited concerns over "involuntary religious proselytizing." Dartmouth's own religious guidelines declare the campus "a community which encourages dialogue and practices critical, free and rational inquiry."

West says that Campus Crusade wants in on the dialogue, and selected Mere Christianity precisely because many students who might never pick up a Bible have been impressed by Lewis's arguments.

"We wanted to show students that there are some very credible thinkers — some intellectual heavyweights — who embrace the claims of Christ," he says. "C.S. Lewis is renowned as an author and scholar."

Indeed, Lewis has received special attention in 1998, the 100th anniversary of his birth. Conferences and other events celebrating the impact of his work were held throughout the year.

One of the main factors behind the trouble at Dartmouth, in West's view, is Lewis' Christianity. He notes that no controversy arose earlier in the year when Buddhist monks sent out a flyer: "It was taken for granted that of course people are free to send this."

In fact, openly solicitous materials, such as promotional mailings for Greek Houses, are regularly sent out without incident.

Yet in the case of Campus Crusade, West states, "We didn't ask for a donation. We didn't post the times of our meetings. We asked for nothing except for people to consider the message C.S. Lewis had in the book."

West is hopeful that many students will do just that.

"If this book stimulates freshmen to have a dialogue with their friends — to ask 'what do you think about this'— that would be great," he says. "That's what we would love to see."