<p>Sally, I just don’t see what your problem is. If a school scheduled an exam for Christmas, would you criticize people who requested to take it on a different day for demanding accommodations, since they were choosing to prioritize the holiday over school? After all, people can just go to one of the masses that doesn’t coincide with the exam. </p>
<p>I know plenty of Orthodox students who take off for many more holidays than Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, amounting (if none fall on weekends) to 11-13 days over the course of a school year. This isn’t a matter of wanting to celebrate; they believe that they are religiously prohibited from taking part in classes on those days. I don’t know a single one who thinks the average school should close down on each of those days to accommodate them, or even that the school’s responsibility to accommodate them in more minor ways is absolute. If you would have to miss an excessive amount of class due to holidays, you don’t take that class. Short of that, it is your responsibility to get notes for the material you’ve missed. The only time the professor has to be inconvenienced is if an in-class exam falls on a holiday, and this doesn’t strike me as a horribly unfair burden.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it seems to me totally reasonable that Brandeis, which is a secular school that is half Jewish and has a large observant population, shifts their schedule to avoid the majority of these conflicts. They still manage to have two full semesters and a reasonably normal winter break. That would be silly to do at the UCs, but arranging a schedule so that school doesn’t start on a day that inconveniences a significant minority - and will make work for your own administrators - just seems like both the sensitive and practical thing to do. </p>
<p>I’m curious, Sally, about how you feel about other accommodations. Does it bother you that the SAT has a Sunday test date for religious students? How about the fact that a school with a no hats rule still lets students wear yarmulkes and hijabs? Are students who take advantage of these policies being unreasonable in expecting others to accommodate them?</p>
<p>So basically, the families are forcing the university to accommodate their personal choice,</p>
<p>?</p>
<p>Families aren’t forcing the univs. The univs are making intelligent decisions based on numbers. If you have a lot of students (and faculty/staff) that will be absent for any particular reason (religion, what-have-you), then it makes sense to accommodate that.</p>
<p>People shouldn’t get all up-in-arms about accommodations for other’s religions. Just go with it.</p>
<p>I don’t have a “problem”–I just think it is unreasonable to expect large institutions, especially public ones, to accommodate changing religious holiday schedules year after year. It is obviously an inconvenience to others, as some have stated above. </p>
<p>apprenticeprof, the SAT (College Board) is a for-profit institution and thus can “sell” its services whenever it wants. Sundays would actually work better for a lot of kids who have ECs on Saturdays, not just kids who attend services that day. As for the hats, I am not sure what to say. I wouldn’t ban them for anyone in the first place, but I know why schools do (i.e., to discourage open gang affinity).</p>
<p>I think it’s disingenuous for anyone to argue that they’re “only closing for Christmas because it’s a national holiday.” First of all, it’s suspect that a religious holiday is a national holiday; as apprenticeprof said, that would be tough to justify were the country to try to establish that now–it was established back when the Christian majority freely assumed that this was non-controversial. Surely it would be now. Further, if it was just the observation of a national holiday, then they could hold classes and/or exams on Christmas Eve, even into the evening, because why not? the “national” holiday isn’t till the next day. But of course they don’t do that.</p>
<p>Beyond that, both colleges I teach at, one private, one public, close for Good Friday. So do just about all public schools. </p>
<p>Let’s us who call ourselves Christians not be so hurried to refuse to accord the same respect and accommodations to other religious observations that we take for granted for our own.</p>
<p>As has been said here, it just makes sense to close for the days a significant number of people will be observing the day; one faith shouldn’t be privileged over others.</p>
<p>I agree, garland. The thing with Christmas at this point is that it is the kickoff to the mega-holiday period through the end of the year. It’s convenient that way.</p>
<p>Our public schools do not close for Good Friday. Neither does my son’s LAC, which is still loosely affiliated with a protestant church.</p>
<p>Sally, when you say that the college board is different because it is for profit, does that mean that if, theoretically, a public college had its own admissions exam held on Saturdays, you think they would have zero obligation to offer an alternative date for observant Jewish and Seventh Day Adventist students? </p>
<p>One thing that does seem odd to me about the whole thing is that Rosh Hashanah is really late next year. Most schools will already have been in session for at least two weeks by that time. Why couldn’t the UCs start a week or two earlier than they normally do, which would avoid the issue of needing to adjust move-in and orientation events and be more in line with what most other schools already do anyway? Then they could just have a single day off for Yom Kippur if they felt enough students would be affected to warrant it.</p>
<p>*I think it’s disingenuous for anyone to argue that they’re “only closing for Christmas because it’s a national holiday.” *</p>
<p>I hope no one is claiming that. Of course Christmas has been named a nat’l holiday because Christianity is so dominant in the US. Of course it was determined that too many people wanted that day off, so lawmakers made it a nat’l holiday. </p>
<p>I have no problem with state univs or gov’t agencies making accommodations for other religions when the numbers are there…which they seem to be for the UC situation. </p>
<p>Super! Great!</p>
<p>People have to realize that there are costs and other annoyances involved when accommodations aren’t made when a good number of people are affected. It just makes good business sense to accommodate.</p>
<p>apprenticeprof, I don’t know. Perhaps a student who has these constraints will evaluate colleges in part based on how much accommodation they offer. If it is a moral/ethical decision to prioritize attending services (or not driving, or…) over taking a test that is only offered on a competing day, well–maybe that college isn’t the best choice for that student.</p>
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<p>This is the problem for me in a nutshell. It’s the vagaries of religious calendars that cause the inconvenience. Many thousands of students and their families plan their lives around academic schedules, and the fact that they are generally predictable is a good thing. To have them randomly shift a week or more in either direction from one year to another is a challenge to those who have to coordinate multiple kids, family reunions, weddings, summer enrichment opportunities, performing arts camps, and so on. After years of having kids in school we all get used to the normal cycle of things–same goes for college. Even if there is a significant population of students who follow a particular religion, outside of sectarian institutions these are still a minority. I am not making my point well but hopefully you understand what I am saying now.</p>
<p>Oh yes, most definitely. It’s like any other minority population: will the school be comfortable for me as a URM/student with LDs/non-Christian/LGBT/etc? </p>
<p>Academic calendars are planned years in advance, so in theory it should be straightforward for the administration to look X years down the road and make adjustments. Then families have the information they need to plan for the start of school, break, and so forth.</p>
<p>I understand what you’re saying Sally. I don’t like it. I think it would be unconscionable for a school that would otherwise be totally accessible to me in every way not to offer me an alternative exam date. It shows an utter lack of flexibility and compassion. It is one thing if you are asking a school to fundamentally change its mode of running things or compromise its core values to suit your private needs. It is another to ask for reasonable adjustments. This applies whether the adjustment is required for religious reasons or for any other credible conflict - I don’t see any reason why a school wouldn’t accommodate the person whose older sister is getting married on that day either. </p>
<p>I’m not sure I buy your argument that families would be terribly put out if school sometimes started one week, and sometimes the next. Usually, there’s a small amount of variation in any calendar from year to year; if a school usually starts around the 10th, and the 10th is a Friday, they might choose to start Monday the 6th that year, while the next year, when the 10th is a Saturday, they start Monday the 12th. Families cope, just as they cope when they have multiple students with different start dates. If your kid is only in the school for four years, it isn’t as if you’re disrupting some custom from time immemorial. It seems to me that the image of hordes of families at odds because the school year started a little bit earlier than it normally does - which would be a lot closer to the start of the K-12 school year and that of the vast majority of other colleges, in any case - is a fantasy. I do think that having a super-short winter break is a real problem, which is why I proposed this alternative. </p>
<p>Now, as it is nearly sundown on a Friday night, I’m out for the next 25.</p>
<p>All I can tell you is that Northwestern routinely takes into account the shifting Jewish HHD when planning Wildcat Welcome for new students and the start of classes, and it seems to work out fine. Sometimes the HHD happen early before classes begin, problem avoided. Sometimes they happen in the middle, and so they shift a day or two to avoid move-in right on those dates. Sometimes they happen a bit afterwards, in the first week or two of classes, so the profs are sensitive not to do something that can’t be made up. </p>
<p>These calendars are set out in advance anyway. So one year classes start Sep 19 and one year they start Sep 24. So what? Even without accommodation for holidays, start and end days shift a bit from year to year.</p>
<p>Sally, have you ever lived in places where the elementary schools closed for the High Holidays and/ or Good Friday in response to the makeup of that student body? I don’t live in an area with a high Jewish population, but I’m willing to bet a good chunk of the North Shore suburban districts have off for the HHD.</p>
<p>if we try to accommodate everyone’s important holidays we will run out of days to have class.</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s any fear of that. The issue isn’t accommodating “everyone’s” holidays, the issue is accommodating when the numbers are there. </p>
<p>No one is thinking that schools need to close because some school has a couple of people whose faith has XX date as a holy day. but, when the numbers are high enough that it becomes a pain NOT to accommodate and too many people will be gone, then it makes sense.</p>
<p>Sally, I have a lot of clients in the East Coast - so their offices / teams have quite a number of Jewish people. In my work, part of what I do is travel out to them and conduct, let’s say a 2-day workshop, or a series of focus groups. Now for me, it doesn’t matter all that much, I’m not observant. But when I schedule these workshops, I do take into account Jewish holidays because it’s just no good for me to schedule something and have 10% or 20% of the people who are supposed to show up not show up. It’s not that I’m “kowtowing” to them – it’s just that if I know they are going to be unavailable, why make it then when I can easily move it a few days here or there? Same principle, really. No one has ever <em>insisted</em> that I move a workshop - it just is a better business decision for me to know my audience.</p>
<p>Our public elementary schools do not take Good Friday off, and they do not schedule Spring break around Easter and haven’t for as long as I can remember. I don’t know why they would need to either, since Easter is one day on a Sunday, and no one needs to travel anywhere for it.</p>
<p>I think someone earlier stated that the UC’s schedule their Spring break around Easter. I looked at the UCLA calendar, and I don’t see that as the case. Easter 2014 is on April 20, and I don’t see any days off around that time. Maybe I’m reading it wrong.</p>
<p>Our public schools do not refer to any religion on their calendar. There is Winter Recess and Spring Recess, not Christmas break or Easter break.</p>
<p>When public schools take holidays for the HHD, how do they refer to them? As religious holidays that the entire school gets to take off?</p>
<p>The UC campuses have more than 40% of Asian students. They should not have classes for 1 week period so that Asian students can celebrate the Asian New Year which starts on January 30 this year.</p>
<p>For UC or any other university, same process as for RH and YK: an Asian student who wants to celebrate for the one day holiday talks to their professor and gets accommodations for any deadlines or tests. If there’s a growing desire for a university to accommodate by, say, shifting the start of winter quarter classes so that break covers the holiday (which shifts each year), then the university can decide at that time.</p>
;)</p>