Tulsa, Okla. ? Back in 1963, when evangelist Oral Roberts built a university on Tulsa’s southern outskirts and put his name on it, he believed he was taking orders from God.

At the center of campus he built a 200-foot steel and glass prayer tower that looks like a spaceship and is topped with a flickering gas flame representing the Holy Spirit.

Roberts’ vision was to educate “the whole man” in mind, body and spirit.

That meant a world-class faculty, mandatory chapel attendance, body-fat measurements and citations for public displays of affection.

Times have changed at Oral Roberts University.

The once rigid dress code has been loosened so much that, as one student puts it, aside from the lack of guys wearing earrings the campus could be Oklahoma State. The prayer tower is showing rust. Students still sign an honor code pledging not to lie, steal, curse, drink or smoke – but they also hold hands during chapel.

Oral Roberts, now 89, recently returned from semiretirement to try to quell a scandal that has shaken the flagship university of charismatic Christianity, but on Friday the scandal caused the downfall of his heir.

Roberts’ son, Richard Roberts, resigned Friday as president of the school, facing accusations that he misspent school funds to support a lavish lifestyle and ordered an accountant to help hide improper and illegal financial wrongdoing.

To ORU’s 5,300 deeply religious students, the events of recent weeks have brought an unexpected test, one that caused them to choose between questioning or defending the administration, worry about tainted diplomas and search for spiritual answers.

“I’m sure there is corruption everywhere,” said freshman Ben Conners, one of a number of people interviewed before the resignation. “But if you’re holding students to such a high standard, making them sign an honor code and live by these strict principles, I expect the administration to be living an even stricter set of principles. To see something like this, it feels empty, like an elaborate masquerade party.”

At a university that is hardly a den of dissent, the reaction to the scandal has been striking. Before Richard Roberts stepped down, tenured faculty gave him a no-confidence vote and his hand-picked provost said he would resign if Roberts were reinstated.

“There was a time when the wagons would circle and we’d protect our own,” said the Rev. Carlton Pearson, a former member of the ORU board of regents who is now a United Church of Christ minister. “But we don’t know what our own is anymore. People are asking questions and questioning answers, and we’re not used to it.”

Albert Thompson, a government major from Fairfax County, Va., said he chose ORU to become not just a public servant, but a better person.

Thompson, a senior, initially was angry about the allegations.

But like other students, he separates the university administration from his university experience.

“He’s just a human being,” Thompson said of Richard Roberts. “If that individual man fails, that doesn’t affect my faith in Christianity. It affects my faith in Richard.”

“In Scripture, we all fall short,” said Vincent Narciso, a senior from Seattle studying international relations. “We’re all capable of screwing up. To me, it’s not devastating to see someone fall. It’s arrogant to think it wouldn’t happen to any of us.”