Every Religion Gets a Holiday!

I heard this story today, and it intrigued me enough to post about it. Read on, my thoughts are to follow…

“A York University professor is calling on Queen's Park to stop the school's tradition of cancelling three days of classes in October to honour Jewish holidays.

While York is believed to have more Jewish students than any university in Canada — at nearly 5,000, they represent almost 10 per cent of the student body — history professor David Noble says no public, secular university should cancel classes for Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah or any other religious holiday, especially in a province that plans to outlaw religious arbitration.

Noble, who is Jewish, plans to hold classes in open defiance of the cancellations, which he says violate the York University Act of 1965 forbidding the university to impose religious observances on any of its members. "We have a secular government and a secular university that makes it illegal to impose religious observances on students and professors who otherwise would not honour them," he said. Noble doesn't plan to defy cancelling classes on religious holidays like Good Friday because they're statutory.

A provincial spokesperson said Queen's Park respects universities' right to set policies. A York spokesperson said the university adopted the practice in 1974 at the suggestion of a student, adding the rule against imposing religious observation was meant to protect religious freedom.”

Today I heard the professor on a talk radio station, saying that from now on he will give his students every major religious holiday off, with no plans for makeup classes. This infuriated some university officials, and even members of the Jewish community. The prof’s argument is that it’s simply not fair for students of certain religions to get days off while others don’t.

I think for a country like Canada these kinds of exceptions should be avoided. Canada is a mixture of many religions, which should all be respected equally. For instance, there are a large number of Muslim and Hindu students who attend York, getting no special recognition for their religious holidays. I’m sure students of other religions feel that their religion is just as important and that they should get days off. One argument to be made here is that since York University receives funding from a secular government, they should not be allowed to make special exceptions for any religion. The way I look at it, is that if you respect one religion, you have to respect them all. If it’s too hard to accommodate all religions, then just stick to what every other university does.

What the professor did is very smart if you ask me. He made his point by doing the exact opposite of what he was asking for. By giving his students religious holidays, students will now attend on 15 days of school during October. The buzz caused by his decision, got his point across.

Technorati Tags: Religious Holidays, Jewish, York University, David Noble