The Yale Five
Garvey, John
here are five Orthodox Jews, all first-year students at Yale, who are challenging a rule that says they must live in Yale's mixed-sex dormitories. I wish them well. Their case is...
...They are not a needed form of legislation...
...What is really being said here is that secularism has won...
...Their case is complicated by the fact that Yale is a private university which has the right to make its own rules, but the case has larger implications, and the argument the students are making is one that should matter to people who think religion is more than a matter of private taste...
...The problem obviously has to do with more than dormitory life alone, and the students face a wider problem: How do you try to live a traditional religious life in an environment that contradicts it in so many ways...
...I am glad that the recent moves to enshrine prayer in public schools have failed...
...This case is especially interesting because we live in a time when schools (private schools included) are being told by the government that they may not discriminate in terms of race or sex...
...Let me begin by saying that the legal case here is made somewhat more difficult by the fact that we aren't talking about a tax-supported place, and no one has an automatic right to be a Yale student...
...An argument can be made that we will necessarily move to a society in which people like the Yale Five will have to segregate themselves and raise their children separately...
...But according to Freedman, "no residential college at Yale prohibits visits by either gender, so some students would inevitably have boyfriends or girlfriends spend the night, and use the hallway bathrooms...
...Any form of public prayer that could be agreed upon by public-school officials would have all the resonance of most writing done by educators, and would therefore be blasphemous...
...I know a lot of homeschoolers who have anticipated this, and I understand and largely agree with their point of view...
...They are arguing against a surrender...
...According to the prevailing winds, by telling anyone who has another view to sit over there and shut up...
...The university could sum up its argument by saying that if you want to be here, you accept the rules, and if you don't, you can go somewhere else...
...The idea that there might be more compelling truths is itself seen as a form of oppression...
...The Lord of Hosts would, after a committee meeting, be reduced to The Person Upstairs, and we should all be struck dead...
...Commonweal 7 July 17, 1998...
...On the surface, you might wonder why the Yale Five object to living on a single-sex floor in a dorm...
...But what really matters, from the point of view which rules, is that you--like the Amish and the Hasids--have the right to live at the margins of a world in which nothing matters but commerce and the choice of whatever the hell you want to do, consistent with commerce...
...Bless them...
...Legally, Yale would seem to be on solid ground here...
...Yale insists that the dorm rule is consistent with the demands made by its curriculum: You may not agree with everything, but you have to be willing to be exposed to it...
...This is different...
...The Yale Five are saying that all values are not equal, that we should not be made to conform to a pattern set by a society which is indifferent to the idea that some things are demanded of us, that we should at the very least consider these things, as part of any serious education...
...According to a good account of the dispute in the May 24 New York Times Magazine ("Yeshivish at Yale," by Samuel G. Freedman), the "Yale Five" argue that Yale should be considered a public institution where such a basic constitutional right as freedom of religion is concerned, and is therefore subject to federal antidiscrimination laws...
...The students, men and women, have charged that Yale is guilty of religious discrimination...
...You are entitled to your beliefs, as long as you make them a matter of personal and not public concern...
...How do we reconcile a tradition which does not approve of premarital sex, abortion, and an attitude toward sex which allows anything short of nonconsenting violence, with secular society...
...If not, go to Yeshiva, if you are a Jew (or Notre Dame, if you are Catholic, or Brigham Young, if you are Mormon...
...If you are someone who believes in a traditional religion, one that makes demands that may separate you in practice from many of your contemporaries, your only right is to keep this fact to yourself, or to make it an interesting part of your individual "lifestyle...
...At the same time, religious people are told by those who would make the barrier between religion and society absolute that their understanding, their moral concerns--concerns which could be seen as comparable to concerns over racial and sexual discrimination--simply don't matter...
...In addition, the Orthodox students have been encouraged to attend lectures on safe sex, and a required composition class included a reading on abortion...
Vol. 125 • July 1998 • No. 13
