January 10, 2014 Dear Colleagues, I am writing to you today reluctantly but with increasing concern about reports in the media of which you are more than likely already aware and which surely has concerned many of you. These reports have criticized and even demonized York University and myself as your Dean because of a decision I made to support a
student’s request for accommodation on the grounds of religious belief. I am
dismayed that the decision to accommodate has been characterized as an endorsem
ent of the student’s belief system, and as a betrayal of York’s decades long
efforts toward gender equity. I want to assure each of you of my unwavering commitment to gender equity and of my sincere regret that, given the specific circumstances of this request for accommodation, I was obliged to conclude that the
student’s request had to be accommodated.
Such requests for accommodation are usually treated confidentially. However, as so much has been written about this case in the media, I feel obliged though with considerable reluctance--and still leaving unspecified the student, the professor, the course, and the department--to account in some detail the circumstances leading to my decision. There were two determining factors underlying my decision. The first was the specific circumstance of the course in question; the second was the set of obligations placed upon universities by the Ontario Human Rights Code. The course was listed and coded as being offered exclusively on-line. Thus the student registered in the course in the reasonable expectation that he would not be obliged to come to campus or to interact, in person, with other students. When the course began, and the student was made aware that there was a group project that would involve his live interactions with fellow students, he wrote to the professor asking for accommodation (that is, for an alternative way of making up that portion of the grade). The professor had apparently made such an accommodation for at least one other student, who was taking the course at a great distance, an accommodation of which the applicant was aware. This is where the u
niversity’s obligations under the Ontario Human Rights Code
come in. My understanding it that, under the Code, institutions must endeavour to accommodate for reasons of religious belief if three conditions are met: 1) the applicant must be sincere in his/her convictions; 2) the accommodation must
have no substantial impact on other students’ experience in the class; 3) the
accommodation must not undermine the academic integrity of the course.
FACULTY OF LIBERAL ARTS & PROFESSIONAL STUDIES Office of the Dean
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Those in my office, and from the Centre for Human Rights, the Office of the University Counsel, and the Office of Faculty Relations who followed up on the request took the first point as
a given. They concluded from the professor’s having
already accommodated another student with an alternative assignment that the
completion of the group work project was not essential to the course’s integrity. And they judged that the student’s absence f
rom the group work project would have no substantial impact on the experience of other students. They concluded also that because the conditions set down by the Code had been met, York had an obligation under the terms of the Code to accommodate. This was the substance of the recommendation made to me, a recommendation that I accepted, and after consultation with the Provost, wrote to the professor accordingly, requiring that he accommodate the student in precisely the way he had accommodated the student taking the course from abroad. I trust that this detailed account conveys the care, consideration, and concern that led up to my decision. Had the course been listed as anything other than an exclusively on-line course, the student would presumably not have enrolled. If the professor had not accommodated another student on the grounds of distance, that is, if the group work had been seen to be essential to the course, the student would have been obliged to take a zero on this element, or to drop the course. That accommodation having been made, however, the sole grounds for different
treatment was the professor’s disapproval of the student’s beliefs
but that disapproval of belief is precisely the way that discrimination on grounds of creed is defined. Which is to say that I wish I had had another choice, but neither I, nor those who advised me, believe that I did.
Sincerely, Martin Singer Dean