Religion & American Law

Christian students at Vanderbilt University are currently in a fight for their right to choose who lead their organizations.  Since September of 2010, Vanderbilt University has been cracking down on student led organizations after an openly gay student was asked to leave a Christian fraternity.  Though this brought Vanderbilt University into national headlines about discrimination on campus, the same issue is arising in a different sort of way.  Christian students have begun to launch several campaigns targeting Vanderbilt University and its non-discrimination policy involving organizations to not require their leadership to hold certain beliefs.  For the Christian organization, they claim that this policy is problematic in a number of ways.  One student goes as far to say that “Our new so-called non-discrimination policy threatens to destroy the integrity of each of our religious organizations”.  Such a charge is one that carries much weight with it.  Beyond the students, faculty and staff are also getting involved to question the administrations sudden attention to the constitutions of all the religious student organizations.   

The sudden attention, many claim, is a question of religious freedom.  Student groups such as the Vanderbilt College Republicans have published a video calling for the administration to recognize the religious freedom of the student.  In the end the students are calling for a freedom within the higher education system to allow student groups to be just that, a student led group.  

In my opinion this non-discrimination policy of Vanderbilt is a positive change to the campus that encourages all students to participate in any student group that choose to.  The Christian students are worried about their right to elect officers in organizations that faith-based but one fact that remains elusive in their discussion is the fact that allstudents pay for the organizations budget and meeting space.  A non-discrimination policy is a common practice that many universities ascribe to due to its ability to not limit particular students from participating in their college career.  The realm of education has always been a battleground for religion and law.  Prayer, evolution, creationism, etc. have been some of the issues that have been tackled in education and now there is a question of whether certain groups should have the ability to exclude certain individuals based on their person beliefs.  For the Christian students in question, this is a simple request and one that should not be hard at all for the administration.  On the other hand, the administration is attempting to create a campus that allows every student the opportunity to participate.  In one of the videos in their campaign, a student claims that this nation was founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs.  This notion then is linked to the right of a student organization to exclude leadership who do not go in line with the beliefs of the group.  For them the right to choose the leadership is heavily intertwined with the right to religious freedom.  The religious freedom quoted throughout the campaigns by the students is an attempt to link the "founding" of this country to a Christian foundation.  Such a link for the student provides the opportunity for them to be able to practice their religion in the public sphere, and in this case on the grounds of a university.  Beyond the history lessons offered by the students on the founding of this nation, one student states that “With this policy, Vanderbilt is going somewhere where no other university has gone before”.  I would like to say that such a policy is not new and it is not something that should be seen as threatening but one that attempts to embrace the diversity of the campus and allow every student to fully participate on their campus.