On That Accomodation Thing Up At York U

I find myself in the minority on this one, thinking that the University should have accomodated student X, even if the accomodation was to placate his religuously induced discomfort with women.

An interesting bit of news came out this morning:

[Rhonda Lenton, Provost for York U] told host Matt Galloway the student's request for accommodation was supported because the class was billed as an online course and no interactions with other students would be required.

"The course had been advertised as an online course and the student had signed up for the course on the understanding that he would not be required to attend on campus," said Lenton. "If it had been an in-class on-campus course, the likely response here would have been that an accommodation would not have been provided."

I think much of my sympathy for student X stems from my own fairly recent experiences with on-line courses.  They're kind of a rip-off, and really the only advantage to them is the fact that you don't have to be at a particular place at a particular time to complete the work and get your credits. And it is that feature, generally speaking, that you are paying for when you enroll in one.

Now, the reason you don't want to be at a particular place at a particular time...should that be relevant?...as long as the course you sign up for states up front that you won't have to be?

I don't think so.  Since we know that the course syllabus said your physical presence was not required, and we know another student was granted an exemption from the same project, this project was obviously considered non-core material.  In a sense, student x was punished by his professor for his religuous beliefs...made to do work he wouldn't otherwise have had to if he hadn't invoked his religion as a means of getting out of it.  If he had begged off because he was going to be elsewhere at the time...snowboarding in the Alps, perhaps...there wouldn't have been a problem.

A Touching Rapprochement Between Muslim And Christian

Except its over the wrong damn issue:

January 16, 2012 (theCatholicThing.org) - The 10 p.m. negotiating session was set to go all night long. This was the last night of a two-week process that had been in planning for years before. All the hard things would be decided in the dead of that final night, when everyone was exhausted, the cafeteria was closed, and the translators had all gone home.

I walked out onto the floor of the immense negotiating room in the basement of the United Nations. Concentric half rings of desks cascaded from the front to the back with one hundred and eighty-something national “flags” arranged alphabetically, and floor-to-ceiling windows 100 feet high overlooking the moonlit East River.

On the negotiating floor, I approached a Muslim ambassador and said, “This session is going all night long and its going to be very tough going. And when it gets really hard, I want you to know that right over there,” and I pointed to a section of raised seats off to the side, “twenty Christians will be praying for you.”

That night this man was a tiger in defense of unborn children. The gathered western governments, along with U. N. bureaucrats, hungered for a right to abortion that would require nations to allow for the unrestricted killing of their unborn babies.

He rose time and time again to stop dangerous language from entering into that document. He pounded on his desk. At one point, he even rose in defense of our Christian NGOs who had come under attack from the European Union. As the sun rose, his efforts, our efforts, paid off. An alleged right to abortion was stopped once more.

And  here's how they justify folks who might be persecuting Christians at home:

We in the U.N. pro-life movement believe we are called to this fight in particular. We applaud those who work on other legitimate human rights issues like religious persecution. But we believe the right to life comes first. It is the right that makes all other rights and freedoms possible including freedom of religion.

We also believe that in our own way we do fight for religious freedom. In working with Muslim diplomats, in becoming friends with them, even by loving them, we believe we are changing hearts and minds. And in our own – perhaps mysterious – way, we do help our beleaguered brothers and sisters. This commonly misunderstood way is the way of Christ.

I reproduce this here for no other reason than I think its a fairly compelling piece of prose, though of course I disagree with many of the sentiments expressed in it.

Did Horwath Step Into Toronto School/Mosque Debate?

 Actually, given her earlier statement here, I think not.  But some guy up in Orangeville is on about the Islamist menace and yada yada yada and says:

“Timid” Tim Hudak’s response to the ‘discovery’ of public school mosque-activity is entirely lacking, totally inadequate for someone seeking to become premier of Ontario, which position has direct responsibility and oversight for the totality of Ontario’s publicly funded education system. He has, effectively, stated that this “is a local school board issue.” This response is a cop-out. Obviously, politically, Mr. Hudak is mindful of “Gentleman” John Tory’s electoral chances (and silver opportunity) crashing and burning in 2007, in large part over the issue of school choice. But, this Islamification of the conventional school day is entirely different and most certainly not merely a local school board issue. It is the thickening edge of a wedge. Only Ms. Horwath, of the provincial NDP, has come out openly against school hour, in-school and in-cafeteria Islamic prayer hours in our shared public schools, ground-zero of neutral Canadian citizenship.

[...]

It may take Ms. Horwath, to stand up for Ontarians now and to say, “Enough is enough”, and that all the slights and put-downs toward females, and the wrongs done them taken together, cannot make even one right.

Did Andrea Horwath change her position 180 degrees, or can we put this down to the ramblings of a small-town opinionizer? 

But while we're on the topic of Valley Park School, its important to distinguish two levels of  concern with the school's actions.  One is: has the school successfully navigated its way through the various legal issues (accommodation vs. gender equity) in arranging these prayer services?  The 2nd is: whatever the legalities, is the school doing the right thing  by inviting an Imam onto school property to lead prayers on Friday afternoons?

Because, despite the MCC's threat of legal action, the answer to the first question is almost certainly "yes".  Or at least, the TDSB is as lawyered up as anyone, and it would be astounding if this decision wasn't scoped out from a dozen different angles by their legal people.

I also think that the answer to the 2nd question is a qualified "yes", but to prove it I would have to discuss the female menstrual cycle, and this would probably make me gag.