Grabbing a copy of The Daily Campus, William McElvaney takes a seat in front of the Student Media Company office in Hughes-Trigg. He glances at the opinion section and smiles after noticing another piece on the Bush Library has been published. He says he notices that a new piece is published nearly every day.

Across campus, a Google Alert pops up in Susanne Johnson’s inbox. She has set up a request to be e-mailed any article that mentions SMU and the Bush Library. The alerts appear all too frequently.

When Reverend McElvaney and Dr. Johnson co-wrote an opinion editorial published in the Nov. 10 issue of The Daily Campus, they did not anticipate the response that would follow.

“Never in our wildest dreams could we have predicted this kind of aftermath,” Johnson said.

The Bush Library controversy has made national and global news on networks like ABC, CNN and MSNBC, as well as in papers like The Washington Post and The New York Times. The library proposal has been discussed in three faculty meetings and three petitions referencing the library have been circulating.

Full-time faculty members signed a petition asking for a referendum on whether the institute should be separate from SMU, several Methodist ministers started a petition against the library at SMU, and the Young Conservatives of Texas at SMU circulated a pro-library petition for students and staff to sign.

The debate can be traced back to the question McElvaney and Johnson originally posed in their editorial “The George W. Bush Library: asset or albatross?”

SMU became the front-runner in the library competition in December when the library site selection committee said it was entering into exclusive talks with the university. The university’s initial bid included a library, a museum and a Bush School of Public Service. The Bush Foundation countered the bid with a proposal that includes a library, a museum and a Bush Institute that would report directly to the Foundation.

Most of the faculty support the library and the museum but strongly oppose the institute that would serve as a partisan think tank. President R. Gerald Turner says the library, museum and institute are a package deal.

When McElvaney and Johnson co-wrote the piece on the library, they did not intend to start a movement. They wanted to speak their consciences, explained Johnson. The campus was too quiet on the issue, and they both considered it too important to not be discussed.

They say the article is not political; it’s denominational. Being ordained ministers, both authors know the Methodist teachings, and both feel the Bush administration’s actions counter the ideals upheld by the United Methodist Church.

The two sat down for separate interviews recently to discuss their opinions on the current state of the library debate and their motivations for publishing their first editorial.

McElvaney and Johnson are both concerned a Bush Institute on campus would associate the views and actions of the Bush Administration with the university.

McElvaney believes that think tanks are composed of partisan agendas and that they do not support open inquiry.

“I’ve always liked that SMU’s colors are red and blue,” McElvaney said.

“But in the direction we’re heading, we’ll be putting one color over the other.”

McElvaney’s family history is a part of the university’s history. He, his mother, his wife and his daughter all earned degrees from SMU. But it was not so much his family ties that led McElvaney to join Johnson in making a public statement against the Bush library bid. It was the way he sees the world.

McElvaney led a campaign in 1959 against segregation in the Mesquite school district. He was awarded the SMU Distinguished Alum Award in 1980 and the Dallas Peacemaker Award, along with his wife, in 1997.

He is driven by his passion for justice and peace and his understanding of the Christian Gospel. When thinking about the less than kind words that have been directed his way, McElvaney smiles and shrugs.

“I got a phone call at home from a man threatening to crucify me in The Dallas Morning News. I told my wife, as long as it’s in The Dallas Morning News, it’s alright,” McElvaney said.

Similarly, Johnson’s values have helped her stay strong and true to her position despite criticism. But she hasn’t always had the gusto that now drives the campaign to keep the Bush Institute separate from the university.

That came with time.

It might have come from being only the second woman to enroll in Phillips Theological Seminary in Enid, Okla. during the fall of 1973. It might have come from having only male professors in her Master’s of Divinity program at Phillips. It might have been growing up in southeastern Mississippi with a role model list limited to secretaries and female schoolteachers and recognizing that wasn’t all she could aspire to be. All of Johnson’s experiences played a part in teaching her the value in voicing personal beliefs.

In October 2006, Johnson says she mastered facing her fears. She was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and for three months she lived under that diagnosis.

During those months, Johnson was not bitter. She was not afraid. She learned to accept the idea of death and is convinced that is the hardest idea to accept.

In December, a more sophisticated test showed that the lesions originally suspected to be cancerous were benign.

“Everything pales in comparison to facing one’s own mortality quicker then one would have ever thought,” Johnson said.

That includes the criticism Johnson has had to face since co-authoring the opinion editorial.

“I’m in the book that counts, the book of life,” Johnson said. “I don’t care what other print media say.”

McElvaney agrees that criticism is not a concern now and was not a concern when they considered co-writing the editorial. When people pointed out that the article would probably be attacked by Bush supporters on campus and in the community, McElvaney said he always answered with a simple “So what?”

Both McElvaney and Johnson knew they would be able to gather the strength they needed to face opposition from their personal convictions.

Johnson has also been able to depend on support from friends and colleagues. Patricia Davis, deputy director of Academics at The Guildhall, is an example of the many who appreciate Johnson’s voice and approach to the issue.

“Although I disagree with just about every aspect of her campaign, I would never underestimate her tenacity, and never doubt her integrity,” Davis said.

When the first article was published, the dam broke, according to Johnson. Opinions on both sides surfaced and Johnson and McElvaney were open to listening to them. It was important to them that the university encouraged open inquiry.

Input from all over the campus and community has helped shape both McElvaney’s and Johnson’s arguments.

Johnson continues the campaign with increased passion and consistently produces ideas and e-mails on the issue.

McElvaney has continued to voice his opinion on the institute by explaining the argument in meetings held by Methodist groups around the community.

Several other commitments keep McElvaney busy. He serves on both the Church and Society Committee and the Human Development Committee at Northaven Methodist Church. He is on the advisory committee for the Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility, and he is kept busy with family obligations.

Johnson published a second piece in the Jan. 23 Daily Campus entitled “Can We Talk About Something Else, Please?” that reflected a greater understanding of the argument.

Johnson’s second article aimed to shift the focus of the conversation to the institute. She realized she needed to make a more nuanced argument that addressed the difference between the library and museum component and the proposed think tank.

Her efforts are now directed toward “fire walling” the institute so that it is not associated with SMU.

Experts have weighed in through national media on McElvaney and Johnson’s arguments. Benjamin Hufbauer is an associate professor at the University of Louisville and an expert in presidential libraries. He published several pieces on the Bush Library, including two pieces in The Dallas Morning News.

In an e-mail interview he explained the current proposal for the Bush Library puts the library at risk of being a center for political propaganda and “by far the most ideologically driven presidential center ever built.”

In the face of opposition and with some support, Johnson continues the grassroots effort ignited by the first editorial. She stands in the midst of faculty meetings and media frenzy, holding onto the compromise she believes is best for the university.

Despite the overwhelming response to their editorial, neither Johnson nor McElvaney has lost their sense of humor. They hit the big time when they were featured on the Jan. 25 “The Colbert Report” as a part of the “The Word,” where host Stephen Colbert compared them to Marx and Lenin and Cheech and Chong.

“The Marx and Lenin I get,” McElvaney says. “But Susan is still asking me ‘Are you Cheech or Chong?'”