I saw this article earlier and wanted to comment on it, but got caught up in the Super Tuesday--The Sequel mess. In the midst of everything, we still managed to have a very interesting discussion about it on Daily Kos.
Over at Haaaahvahd, they're testing a new system in one of their gyms which would ban men from working out during certain hours. Why?
Harvard University has banned men from one of its gyms for a few hours a week, a move to accommodate Muslim women who, for religious and cultural reasons, cannot exercise comfortably in their presence.
**************************
The trial policy went into effect Feb. 4, about a month after a group of six Muslim women, with the support of the Harvard College Women's Center, asked the university for the special hours, spokesman Robert Mitchell said.
"We get special requests from religious groups all the time and we try to honor them whenever possible," he said, noting that the school has designated spaces for Muslim and Hindu students to pray.
No men are allowed in the gym between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Mondays, and between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Even the staff during those times is all women.
The special hours allow the Muslim women, who adhere to traditional dress codes by covering their hair and most of their skin while in public, to dress more appropriately for exercising, said Susan Marine, director of the women's center.
"It's a pretty big breach of their moral and religious code for a man to see them with their hair uncovered and it's just not possible for them to be in a mixed environment," she said.
First of all, just out of curiosity, do they even have enough Muslim students at Harvard for this to be a huge issue? During my year abroad in London, I went to a university that I would estimate was nearly 1/3 Muslim. We had a gym on campus, and this was never an issue. Granted, the gym on campus was pretty crappy. I worked out there simply for the convenience, but I knew plenty of girls who worked out elsewhere. But gender-segregation issues like this never came up there.
Here's the bigger issue though. Had they implemented this policy on behalf of all women, it wouldn't seem that big a deal. There are plenty of reasons why some women feel uncomfortable working out around men, regardless of religious beliefs. That's why women-only gyms like
Curves are so successful. But this makes it pretty clear that it's just on behalf of Muslim women, not on behalf of all female students.
And this is where, in my opinion, you cross the line between accomodating one group's religious beliefs and infringing on another group's rights.
In
the discussion on Daily Kos, some people made the comparison to colleges offering kosher food in the dining halls or having women-only dormitories. But there's a huge difference there. Serving kosher food in separate containers does not infringe upon those who aren't observant Jews, nor do women-only or other specialty dorms infringe on those who live elsewhere. At Cornell, we have a kosher dining hall, but it's open to anyone who wants to eat there, and indeed, plenty of non-Jewish students on West Campus eat there on a regular basis--it's convenient and the food's pretty good.
There was even a case at another school with a large number of Muslim students, University of Michigan-Dearborn, where they
installed footbaths in some of the bathrooms to accomodate those who needed to wash their feet before they prayed. Again, as long as the footbaths are available to anyone who wants to use them, having them doesn't infringe upon anyone else's rights.
But when you're restricting access to a service that's supposed to be available to all students based on a small group's religious objections, that DOES, in fact, infringe on the rights of others. And a college campus that is supposed to provide students with equal access to its services should not be in the business of accomodating one religious group at the expense of everyone else.
And it's nothing against Islam. It'd be equally problematic if it were ultra-Orthodox women, or any other religious group.
If this is that big a deal for the university, what they ought to do is provide a separate room for women to work out in. Don't say it's just for Muslim women, open it up to all women who prefer to exercise in that environment. That way, Muslim women can work out comfortably, and no one is restricted from the gym of their choice.
Harvard is a private institution, so they're free to do as they please. But the way they're proposing to do this is only going to further isolate Muslim students from the rest of the student body and will only counterract the goals of a liberal institution.
