Jewish students and faculty are again calling on the University of Wisconsin (UW) to consider moving the first day of class inadvertently scheduled on Rosh Hashanah.
The university insists that while the scheduling mix-up is unfortunate it is far too late to change the start date of fall classes, despite Jewish leaders and over a dozen faith groups urging the school to make an adjustment, reported the Wisconsin State Journal.
"There is no question that it sets an exclusionary and unwelcoming tone for Jewish students, staff and faculty," Chad Goldberg, a Jewish professor at the UW-Madison campus who is associated with the Center for Jewish Studies, told the Journal.
The university’s six campuses have all expressed some degree of regret and promised to ensure the situation does not reoccur in the future. One campus, UW-Parkside said it would apologize for the mistake. Five of the six campuses, excluding UW-La Crosse, said they would undertake a full review of all future academic schedules.
With only two months to go until the September 8 start date of class, many Jewish professors and students are having to work out the logistics of missing the first day of class.
The campus religious accommodation policy requires that within the first two weeks students notify their instructors of specific class days they will be unable to attend for faith-related reasons. However, the policy does not deal with any conflicts that may occur on the first day of class.
For instructors, the policy requires that they receive approval from the chancellor or the dean, a hard to navigate proposition for most faculty.
"I’m very sorry that this conflict happened and that our students and my instructional colleagues are facing this, and (I am) very determined that this won’t happen in the future," said John Zumbrunnen, UW-Madison vice provost of teaching and learning, in an interview with the Journal.
He is heading a group reviewing the next five calendar years for any conflicts.
While Zumbrunnen said there isn’t a “one-size fits all” approach for instructors when dealing with scheduling conflicts surrounding religious holidays, he promised to provide additional guidance in the next few weeks.
He also recommended that students notify their professors in advance if possible, but emphasized that doing so is not a requirement and no student will be penalized for missing the first day of class.
Chancellors from several UW campuses said that staff are reviewing future academic calendars for similar potential conflicts.
However, UW-La Cross Chancellor Joe Gow said that his campus has no plans to do so and that the current religious accommodation policy is the most realistic approach.
"Because of our commitment to embrace the diversity of traditions among our students and colleagues, and because we acknowledge that we cannot realistically adapt the academic calendar to every religious holiday, we have had a long-standing policy for religious accommodation," he wrote in a letter. "We feel strongly that this approach is effective for our institution, due to the wide variety, and often changing representation of faiths on a college campus."