A Christian women's housing group at Purdue University (purdue.edu) has been exempted from a non-discrimination policy that would have prevented members from organizing around their beliefs.
The university's non-discrimination clause required that student groups not discriminate on the basis of any of a long list of characteristics, including religious beliefs, when selecting their members. Groups that failed to adhere to the policy ran the risk of losing rights and privileges on the West Lafayette, Indiana, campus.
However, the members of a Christian women's residential group called the Stewart Cooperative took issue with the policy because it barred them from requiring that their members be of the same faith. But when the Stewart Cooperative asked to be excused from this requirement, the group was threatened with eviction from the house it owned.
The Christian women's housing group then contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) (thefire.org), which sent a letter to Purdue, asking the school to reverse its stance. After receiving the letter from FIRE, the university granted the Stewart Cooperative and other campus religious groups an exemption from the non-discrimination policy.
Greg Lukianoff, FIRE's director of legal and public advocacy, says his group is gratified that Purdue has changed its position. "Common sense should tell you that if you have a Christian group, it should be allowed to discriminate against non-Christians. There's nothing wrong with that -- the integrity of the group depends on the right to exclude people who don't share their point of view," he says.
Lukianoff says FIRE has handled enough such cases, and has so thoroughly publicized them, all over the country that he hopes "at least some universities are starting to get the message that a non-discrimination clause can be used for discrimination if you don't exempt religious organizations."
The legal advocate notes, "If your entire expressive purpose is your religious identity, of course you can 'discriminate' against people who don't share that religious identity."
In fact, Lukianoff feels the university was unfairly discriminating against the Stewart Cooperative by preventing the group from organizing around religion while allowing student groups to organize around other shared interests. However, he says, FIRE has found that many Christian students, unfortunately, are unwilling to fight for their rights on campus.