After a contentious decision by the Milwaukee School of Engineering Student Government Association to temporarily not give a Christian student group official recognition, the SGA changed their stance and will allow the group to continue.
SGA officials refused to recognize ReJOYce in Jesus Campus Fellowship, because of the group’s reluctance to admit individuals who do not live according to the group’s Christian guidelines. Two other groups, the Muslim Students Association and the Cigar and Pipe Social Club, were also asked by the SGA to change their bylaws before being officially recognized by the university.
In a letter sent to RJCF, the student government said, “We will not allow for any form of discrimination based on any class which is protected by the statutes for the State of Wisconsin, by the University Policies of the [MSOE].”
RJCF members had refused to accept the SGA requirement to change their bylaws and instead, went to the Philadelphia-based Freedom for Individual Rights in Education for aid.
According to FIRE President David French, although the SGA decided to reverse their decision, it was telling that the SGA chose to correct the mistake in such an indirect way.
“While we are pleased that MSOE’s student government has reversed its earlier decision, MSOE administrators need to realize the RJCF should never have faced such a battle in the first place,” French said in a release.
However, the decision at MSOE is not the first of its kind. The Ohio State University group the Christian Legal Society was denied recognition last fall when they refused to accept a non-evangelical and a homosexual student because they broke from the university’s nondiscrimination policy.
Despite this, OSU was forced to change their nondiscrimination policy to allow religious organizations to bar certain students if they wished.
Four other universities have since entered the fray disagreeing with the contentious OSU decision, including Arizona State University-Tempe, University of California’s Hastings College of Law, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Pennsylvania State University-University Park.
The effect of the decision has been minimal at MSOE since many students did not know such a ruling had been made, according to MSOE spokesperson Susan Evert.
However, such decisions are very important, and the rulings of the four involved universities could be very important in deciding the fate of religious organizations around the country.
University of Wisconsin political science professor Donald Downs agreed with the SGA’s decision to return rights back to RJCF.
“I think they’re just responding to various pressures rather than thinking about the principle.” Downs said. “Discrimination tends to be against religious Christian groups more than anyone else because they are not considered politically correct.”
Similar cases have even been debated in the U.S. Supreme Court.
According to UW law professor Gerald Thain, Boy Scouts were able to bar homosexuals when they argued not accepting homosexuals was a major element of their beliefs.
However, if denying homosexuals had not been a major necessity of the existence of the Boy Scouts, than the group would not have been able to bar homosexuals.
“You couldn’t convince the Ku Klux Klan to take on Catholic views,” Thain said.
