Fascinating case

[Robert Justin Lipkin]

In a message dated 8/15/2001 6:48:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
bradjac at REGENT.EDU writes:


> Why admit someone who, by her own admission, is conscientiously prohibited
> from completing an essential component of the educational process (assuming
> that profanity was really essential to the theater program in question)?
>
>
       I'm not sure what context is presupposed and what process is required?
Should we add a section to applications asking applicants which courses, or
what topics within a course, he or she is "conscientiously prohibited" from
engaging in? From my perspective, a greater sensitivity to students' needs
and convictions is also appropriate on a personal or one-to-one basis.  But
are you suggesting that we should attempt to institutionalize such a process?
Where we'll this take us morally if not constitutionally? Were my daughter
to attend Regent University and major in drama should the students and
administration there accommodate her refusal to utter some locution or set of
words in a Christian play--words that are perfectly appropriate from a
Christian perspective? To leap beyond such pedestrian examples--should City
College in New York accommodate a drama student who refuses to utter
"Brooklyn College sucks." (please excuse the expression) in a new play
premiering at the senior university? I think institutional sensitivity and
accommodation is an attractive ideal, but just how can we make it operational?

Bobby Lipkin
Widener University School of Law
Delaware

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