Cases alter academic climates

University officials throughout the nation are watching with interest as lawyers involved in the Alpha Iota Omega lawsuit at UNC try to hash out a compromise before Monday’s deadline.

The Christian fraternity’s lawsuit against UNC is the latest episode in a legal movement that has swept across some of the country’s top public universities during the past five years.

The cases haven’t been cataclysmic, officials said, but they have sparked important dialogue — while at the same time forcing leaders to make sure that the polarization the cases have caused won’t lead to further conflict.

“I think that we always have to be concerned about the climate,” said Gerald Rinehart, associate vice provost for student affairs at the University of Minnesota.

In 2003, the Maranatha Christian Fellowship — a campus religious group — sued UMinn. It claimed that forcing campus groups to sign an “equal opportunity statement” violated their constitutional right to free expression.

The case led to increased debate on campus, Rinehart said, and he fears that extremism could have a chilling effect on tolerance at the university — especially of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students, or of the students who sued to win their rights.

But that hasn’t happened yet, he said.

“On a day-to-day basis, I do not see changes in the way students treat each other,” he said. “But the climate could turn over very quickly.”

The situation is similar at The Ohio State University, said Elizabeth Conlisk, the school’s spokeswoman. The Christian Legal Society sued OSU, stating that it should not have to admit non-Christians as officers.

But ultimately, Conlisk said, the decision to revise the school’s nondiscrimination policy affected only a small percentage of the student population, even though it was a difficult choice. The danger is that the ideological pendulum, now in the middle, could swing.

“We have hundreds of student organizations, and a very, very small percentage of those are groups that were formed to foster religious beliefs,” she said.

Colleges across the country have faced similar problems.

The Alliance Defense Fund, the Arizona-based legal organization representing AIO, is a religious liberties group that has put much of its focus on such battles.

It has battled nondiscrimination policies at Southwest Missouri State University, The University of Oklahoma, Rutgers University and Arizona State University, in addition to UMinn., OSU and UNC.

ADF lawyer Joshua Carden said that with the exception of the ongoing Arizona case, all the lawsuits reached settlements.

But despite the controversy, university officials say they value the dialogue that has surfaced as a result of dealing with difficult issues.

Bruce Reitman, dean of students at Tufts University, saw firsthand the beginnings of the debate in 2000 when a campus religious group was accused of discriminating when choosing its leaders.

Reitman said that he’s followed similar cases and that UNC is the 34th campus to see opposition to a nondiscrimination code.

Though the case waged against Tufts Christian Fellowship remained within the student judiciary, Reitman said the controversy prompted important discussion.

“It was not a win for either side or a loss for either side,” he said. “It was an acknowledgement that what we had in this situation was a clash of two strongly held values — freedom of religion and freedom from discrimination.”

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.