redblueamerica.com

Very good ideea in my opinion. It is their religious standard and in other to make all students "feel like home" some sacrifices are required. I couldn't agree more with the curent decision, and it's not even much of a sacrifice, because boys can practice all week and I'm sure a couple of hours off won't do anyone any harm.
European Cruises

Posts like this make me want to just repetitively bang my head on my desk.

What about the guys who have a very busy schedule and now have to go to a different gym (maybe quite a distance out of their way) because the only available time slot they have falls into the "Women Only" window?

What about the overweight people that don't want skinny people gawking at them while they work out?

What about the pretty people that don't want the uglies and the fatties to look at them with jealousy?

Obviously you can't build a different gym for each group of people. That would be ridiculous. How about we just teach people to have respect for each other?

How about we teach these women to deal with the fact that men will have certain thoughts when they see an attractive woman?

I'm tired of the idea that anything that isn't a white male is oppressed and deserves special treatment. Kid gloves for everybody!

And for those of you that complain that we get Christmas and Easter off, but not any other religious holidays, take them back! I don't care if I have to work on Christmas! Or work to get your own holidays celebrated in a similar fashion. How about we just wipe the slate clean and say if you want to celebrate a holiday, you have to arrange it like you would if you were going on vacation. Put in time off from work 2 weeks in advance, kids get your homework done in advance, and all that other crap.

-=jF

Here's the question, as I see it: The trend of civil liberties is to expand access to public accommodations. This action restricts access to public accomodations. The Supreme Court has issued rulings in the last 20 years that establish that if public schools let extracurricular groups -- the chess club, say -- use a school after hours, they also have to let religious groups use the school as well. You let one group in, everybody gets in.

Harvard's action lets a group in, but shoves other groups out. This may not seem like a large imposition to you -- unless those hours are the ones that you want or need to go exercise, and you're not in the approved group.

That said, I find myself sympathetic to this argument from Matt Yglesias:

Harvard, like all American institutions of higher education of which I'm aware, shuts down and creates a holiday in late December that just so happens to coincide with an important familial and religious observance for Christians whereas no such allowance is made for Passover visits. Christianism? Worse, it happens in public high schools and elementary schools all across the country, the very same country in which no mail can be delivered on Sunday!

Finding a way to accommodate observant Muslims' concerns about co-ed workouts, in short, is hardly some per se outrageous violation of a strict U.S. tradition of secularism. Is the particular way they've done this unduly burdensome? I think to say whether or not it is you'd need to look at the situation and the available alternatives in some detail.

But I'm also sympathetic to the first comment in response to Yglesias' post:

The difference, Matt, is that non-Christians (hey, even atheists like me!) get Christmas off too. Nobody's disadvantaged. Can you say that about shutting women out (sic) of the rec center?

Just so we are clear, Harvard isn't the first to try something like this. Last year, U. of Michigan started putting in Muslim only footbaths to much ire.

Actually, Ben, it's of questionable legality.

For starters, Harvard receives money from the federal government. That money mandates that they fellow federal discrimination law (hence the reason they aren't legally allowed to discriminate.)

What's more, Harvard may inadvertently be violating Title IX's sexual discrimination statute.

This paragraph alone really bothers me.

The length to which Harvard or any institution ought to go to accommodate a range of religious and moral codes presents a complicated question. Although most Westerners reject the idea that a woman ought to veil when in the streets, Harvard fashions itself as a university of the world. Attracting the greatest talents requires accommodating a wide range of social preferences.

When the rest of the world wants to pony up the money to fund Harvard's science and other programs, then and only then can we say it is a private university.

Chuck Johnson is a student at Claremont McKenna College. Feel free to contact him.

How is this legal? It seems to me that people should all play by the same rules.