Last Friday was an ordinary day at Georgetown—classes were held, papers were due and tests were scheduled. Meanwhile, many Jews went home or gathered with family and friends to observe Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and one of the most important religious holidays. If you were a Jew who had a test scheduled last Friday, what could you do? What if you are a Muslim with a midterm on the first night of Ramadan?
Muslims, Jews and other religious minorities are put in a difficult position when exams or big assignments fall on holy days. At Georgetown, a university very publicly committed to inter-religious understanding, this can no longer be the case. As it stands now, there is no unified protocol on religious holidays, but this must change to include policies that allow Georgetown University’s religious minorities to skip classes that conflict with major holidays and absolve them from having to take exams on these days.
As they plan each semester, professors must avoid major Muslim and Jewish holidays when scheduling tests. Students uncomfortable with revealing their faiths should not have to choose between breaking bread and figuring out what a derivative is. In the same spirit, professors should be accommodating to students of faiths other than Judaism and Islam if an exam or major assignment conflicts with a holiday. All students who cannot attend class for religious observances should get an excused absence.
If professors avoid scheduling tests and big assignments on major Holy Days, Muslims and Jews will no longer be forced to take a test before everyone else. The practice of rescheduling tests earlier than the original date shrinks a student’s study time, resulting in a faith-based disadvantage, which may not be consciously imposed,but is still discriminatory.
Professors who won’t test their students on the big holidays of major religions reduce their own stress because they avoid the need to reschedule quizzes and give extensions. In their spring semester syllabi, professors should write that students who give sufficient notice will be excused on holy days.
As a Jesuit university, Georgetown values major Catholic holidays enough to offer a recess from school so that the Catholic half of the student body may worship. It owes the same respect to all religions-—the University boasts a substantial Jewish (somewhere between six and 15 percent) and Muslim population.
It is doubtful that any professors have deliberately tried to be discriminatory in their testing schedules—it is all too easy for a busy professor to forget, in making a syllabus, a holiday which he does not celebrate. However, the University must take it upon itself to institute an equitable and universal policy, and to remind professors of it early and often. Georgetown loves to advertise itself as being welcoming of diverse faiths, but this must be more than slogans on banners and speeches at high profile events—it must translate into concrete concern for the spiritual lives of its students.
