So today I received an email from the Chancellor Breslauer setting out UC Berkeley’s policy on students who have a religious or extra-curricular conflict with an exam or other important event in class. Now a uniform policy like this is quite welcome, it gives instructors clear guidance and makes sure students can plan their other obligations without having to worry about what sort of professors they get this year. What I find objectionable about it is the differences in the way it treats religious ‘obligations’ and sports trips. Here is what the email says about religion:

In compliance with Education code, Section 92640(a), it is the official policy of the University of California at Berkeley to permit any student to undergo a test or examination, without penalty, at a time when that activity would not violate the student’s religious creed, unless administering the examination at an alternative time would impose an undue hardship which could not reasonably have been avoided. Requests to accommodate a student’s religious creed by scheduling tests or examinations at alternative times shall be submitted directly to the faculty member responsible for administering the examination. Reasonable common sense, judgment and the pursuit of mutual goodwill should result in the positive resolution of scheduling conflicts. The regular campus appeals process applies if a mutually satisfactory arrangement cannot be achieved.

Here is what the email says about musical or sports trips:

-It is the instructor’s responsibility to give students a schedule, available on the syllabus in the first week of instruction, of all class sessions, exams, tests, project deadlines, field trips, and any other required class activities. -It is the student’s responsibility to notify the instructor(s) in writing by the second week of the semester of any potential conflict and to recommend a solution, with the understanding that an earlier deadline or date of examination may be the most practicable solution. -It is the student’s responsibility to inform him/herself about material missed because of an absence, whether or not she or he has been formally excused.

The clear sense these rules convey is that the instructor is expected to bend their rules if they might create difficulty or hardship for someone who wishes to respect a religious obligation but that a student who is going to be absent for some other extra-curricular activity undertakes a greater obligation if they want to miss class. Now one might justify such a policy on the grounds that some athletes or musicians are going to be out of town on a large number of dates or that religion is more important to people. However, it would be easy to give every student a certain number of absences they can exercise using the easier standard and there are many students who are more casual about the religious observances they ask to be excused for then athletes are about their games.

Worse it seems that students are given no allowance for non-official extra-curricular activities. Even if the student is really into launching rockets and the annual rocketing event is his favorite thing to do it appears the instructor doesn’t have to give him any accommodation as it isn’t an official school sponsored event. On the other hand someone who thinks ‘yah, I might as well go to church today’ gets all the accommodations mentioned above.

Anyway I don’t mean to critisize the Chancellor, his hands are tied by California law, but merely to point out the way in which non-believers (or even casual church goers) are treated as second class citizens. The things that we may really really care about get no accomodation while just someone has a ridiculous belief about some historical event we have to bend over to accommodate them. Now I fully understand that the potential for religious discrimination is great but if we weren’t implicitly endorsing religion as something more important than say a rocketry hobby we would use some fully neutral policy that gave everyone the chance to do what they really cared about.