A tale of two universities
When rights collide: Educational institutions tread a fi ne line between accommodating student wishes and upholding human rights
Into the complicated stew of human rights questions, two Canadian universities have raised the question of what, if anything, must be done to reasonably accommodate minorities. Their conclusions are wildly different.
The secular, publicly funded one seems willing to bend over backwards to accommodate a single student’s religious beliefs; the other, a private, faith- based university requires students to pledge that they will not engage in any practi ces that are “biblically condemned.”
At Toronto’s York University, a student asked to be excused from course work for an online sociology class that required him to meet in public with female students.
He claimed that such a meeting went against his firmly held religious belief. Citing privacy reasons, the university has withheld the student’s name and religion. Prof. J. Paul Grayson refused the request saying that it would make him “an accessory to sexism” and could set a precedent for others to avoid interacting with other students based on their race, religious or sexual orientation.
York’s dean of arts, Martin Singer, disagreed. He says the university has a legal obligation to accommodate students if it doesn’t have a serious impact on other students. Yet, for centuries women were denied the right to go to universities. For centuries, women have been denied the right to any education and in many countries such as Pakistan, they still have to battle for seats in a classroom.
In Canada, it’s been little more than 50 years that women have been welcomed at universities. And while female students are now the majority in many undergraduate faculties, there remains a gender gap in graduate and postgraduate classes, and among faculty.
Allowing male students to choose not to interact with female students for religious or any other reasons is a serious step backward. To allow it, as Grayson has suggested, sets a precedent that opens the way for other students to use religious beliefs as a reason to ask for exemptions from interacting with gay or lesbian colleagues, or those who are ethnically or racially different.
The same issue of what constitutes universities’ reasonable accommodation has been roiling for months and years in British Columbia with regard to Trinity Western University.
Last month, the B. C. government and the Federation of Law Societies agreed that Trinity Western University could grant law degrees even though the private, faith- based university requires that students, faculty and staff sign a “community covenant” not to engage in homosexual relationships or “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”
If students breach the promise, they face disciplinary action that can include expulsion.
Both the government and the law societies declined to deal with the covenant, saying that it was beyond the scope of their investigation into whether the university has the capacity to train lawyers.
( As an aside, I can’t help wonder whether the government and the law societies would have been so willing to approve a law school if the applicant had been a Muslim, Sikh or Jewish university that demanded students sign a similar covenant.)
The requirement that students and staff pledge not to engage in “homosexual behaviour” as part of a list of other “practices that are biblically condemned” has already landed TWU in the Supreme Court of Canada.
In a split decision in 2001 on a case brought by the B. C. College of Teachers, the court decided that the university could maintain the pledge even though it creates “unfavourable differential treatment.”
Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dube was blunter in her dissent, saying that the contract makes students and employees “complicit in an overt, but not illegal, act of discrimination against homosexuals and bisexuals.” She noted that unlike religious belief, being gay is not a choice.
Universities are unique. Unlike many other institutions such as hospitals or even elementary schools, going to university is optional.
The religious York student, for example, may have greater earning potential if he completes a degree, but there is no requirement for him to go to any university let alone a secular, coeducational one.
But universities are more than vocational schools or even research facilities.
Sir Ronald Barnett, dean of Professional Development at the Institute of Education University of London, suggested that the role of universities in the post- modern world is “not the discovery and handling of knowledge, but the handling of ignorance.”
Scholars fiercely guard another right — the right to academic freedom — specifically because universities are, or ought to be, places where diverse, unpopular, controversial and challenging ideas are openly aired and freely debated.
If there is a bright spot in these seeming attempts to shelter students from opposing views and practi ces, it’s this: Faced with Grayson’s refusal to give him an exemption, the York student went to class.
It would be interesting to find out what he learned from the experience.