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Dear Colleagues I am writing in response to the Dean

‟s

letter of January 10 in which he outlines his reasons for supporting a student who for religious reasons requested that he not be required to interact with females for the completion of a group assignment. There is a great deal that I could say in response to the Dean's letter; however, in the interest of brevity I will only comment on five specific matters that he raises. More detailed documentation is available upon request. Before I concentrate on these five matters I should specify that throughout my actions were governed by two considerations. First, York has a commitment to gender equality. Second, while the Ontario Human Rights Code allows accommodations for religious reasons, such accommodations must not have the effect of restricting the rights of others. In the situation under consideration granting the male

student‟s request for an accommodatio

n would have been inconsistent

with York‟s core values and would

have infringed upon the right of female students to be treated with respect by males. 1.

The Dean states, "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 to interact, in person, with other students." (In actuality the student does come to campus to participate in at least two other courses that he is taking.) In fact, in a letter to the Vice Dean on September 27 I pointed out that the official departmental description of the course included the sentence,

“

course participants will actually conduct focus groups and

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analyze

survey data using SPSS.”

In module 1 of the course this point is reemphasized

. Students are told, “

you will use members of your group as subject

s for your focus group meeting.”

In short, the student should have been aware that he would be required to interact with others in the course, even though it was online. In order to avoid any possible ambiguity in the future, the Vice

Dean, in a letter of October 4, suggested that, “

in future offerings, your section of [the course] ought to be coded as a blended course, that is, as a version with required live elements. This coding ought to preclude any future student's mistaking of the course for one that can be done fully and exclusively on-

line.”

In response, for the coming year, I attempted to list the course as blended; however, I was then told by the Vice Dean that I could not do that. In a letter of Novembe

r 21 he wrote, “

a course that does not involve the CD in scheduled on-campus interactions with his

or her students is not blended.”

This being the case, it seems that the Vice Dean is now agreeing with my original classification of the course as fully online, despite the fact that students are required to meet for the completion of one of the assignments. 2.

In my course I provide an accommodation for students who live at great distance from the campus. Although not optimal (as they are denied the opportunity to be both a participant in, and facilitator of, a focus group) I allow them to conduct their focus group with friends or co-workers. For example, at the beginning of the year, one of my students was in Egypt. (Although the Dean alleges that the student requesting the accommodation was aware

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of this, I could find no indication of that knowledge in any of the communications I had with the student.) It is the Dean

‟s position

that as I made an accommodation based on the

GEOGRAPHICAL

inability of a student to interact with his group, I should also have made one for the student who on the basis of

PREFERENCE

did not want to interact with the females in the class. The situations are not at all parallel. Last year, in the same course, for the same assignment, I had two students who missed the due date. One provided a death certificate verifying the death of a parent. Under these circumstances I gave the student an extension. Another student who missed the deadline reported that he had been on vacation and returned to Toronto too late to complete the assignment. Consistent with the Dean

‟s logic, because I gave an extension to

the first student, I should also have given one to the second; however, I did not. As professors we make judgments, and one accommodation does not set a precedent for another based on different circumstances. 3.

The Dean points out that under the Code institutions must try to accommodate if three conditions are met. One of these

conditions is that, “the accommodation must have no substantial impact on other students‟ experience in the class.” Consistent

with this principle, in his communication to me of November 25, the Dean argued that,

“I am unpersuaded that it

is even arguable that the non-participation of this one male student in group work

affects in any way any other student‟s human rights. Even

assuming that it did

…the effect does not, in my opinion, qualify