A national debate was provoked on Thursday about how far secular institutions should go to accommodate faith when a Canadian student made a request to be able to not interact with female peers on religious grounds, the Agence France-Presse reported.
When the young man's sociology professor turned down the request, he eventually went up against the university administration in a standoff. While taking an online course at York University in Toronto last September, the student asked to be excluded from a cooperative study group because he wished to avoid interacting with women.
"One of the main reasons that I have chosen Internet courses to complete my BA (Bachelor of Arts) is due to my firm religious beliefs, and part of that is the intermingling between men and women," the student wrote in a letter made public this week.
The student, whose religion was not revealed, said, "It will not be possible for me to meet in public with a group of women (the majority of my group) to complete some of these tasks."
According to AFP, after the request was turned down by sociology professor J. Paul Grayson, the student was ordered by the faculty dean, Martin Singer, to accommodate the student's wishes.
Even after the student withdrew his request due to publicity and politely thanked Grayson and the school for considering it, the issue has continued to spiral and became a hotly-debated topic in Canadian newspapers. Grayson explained that he did not wish to become an "accessory to sexism" in a paper documenting the case, cited by several Canadian newspapers.
It might set a precedent for others to avoid interacting with students of a given race, creed or sexual orientation, he said.
"I doubt that we would sanction a student refusing, for religious reasons, to interact with Blacks in classes even though Biblical justification could be found," Grayson wrote in a letter to the university's Centre for Human Rights, cited by the National Post.
Based on the Ontario Human Rights Code, the university administration has remained firm in its position that it has a legal obligation to accommodate religious beliefs, according to several reports.
The dean reportedly said that other students would not be seriously affected by such an accommodation, AFP reported.