Dear Colleagues I am writing in response to the Deans 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 students request for an accommodation would have been inconsistent with Yorks 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 subjects 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 November 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 Deans 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 Deans 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 students human rights. Even assuming that it didthe effect does not, in my opinion, qualify
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as a substantial impact on any other students rights. Unfortunately, the Dean provided no evidence for this opinion. By contrast, I have empirical evidence indicating that the granting of the accommodation would lead some female members of the class to feel belittled and humiliated. In other words, the accommodation would have a substantial impact on other students experience of the class. This alone should have been sufficient to deny the accommodation. 4. The Dean argues, had the course been listed as anything other than an exclusively on-line course, the student would presumably not have enrolled. In fact, the student is taking, as a minimum, two other sociology in-class courses at the current time. He is not only taking online courses. 5. The Dean writes, the sole grounds for different treatment was the professors disapproval of the students beliefs. It would be more appropriate to say that consistent with Yorks core values and those of the society in which we live, the grounds for my denying the accommodation were my beliefs that the rights of female students should not be compromised and that they should be treated with respect by male students. I will conclude by stressing that like the Dean I regret the negative publicity that this event has caused York. It is for this reason that when the Dean first insisted that I accommodate I wrote to the President to ensure that he was aware of the possible consequences of the accommodation. On October 12 I wrote:

I tried to reason with the Dean's Office that because of its implications such an accommodation should be denied; however, I was overruled, and the decision was taken out of my hands. I know that you have a commitment to diversity but presumably not to the extent where meeting a student's religious needs detracts from the status of female students. I do not believe that we want to be known as a university in which the rights of female students can be compromised by religious concerns. I did not expect a response and I did not get one. I also asked the Dean about the possibility of a meeting that would include my Chair so that I could outline the reasons for my discomfort with the course of action he proposed. In response, the Dean assigned someone from his office to deal with the issue, as is his right. I also requested a meeting with the Vice-Provost; however, because the matter was being dealt with by another office, she declined. I am stating these facts lest it be assumed that I acted in haste by contacting the media three months later.