Harvard Sets Women-Only Hours for Gym, Complying With Muslim Students' Request

Sunday, March 02, 2008

In response to a request by female Muslim students, Harvard University has created women-only workout hours at one of its campus gyms. The decision has angered some students at the Ivy League university.

Since Jan. 28, the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center has been open only to women from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Mondays.

The change was prompted by a request from the Harvard College Women's Center, which was approached by six female Muslim students, said Robert Mitchell, communications director of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

"It was done for religious purposes, but it's not closed to other women who may want to participate," he said.

Ola Aljawhary, a student and a member of the Harvard Islamic Society, said the women-only gym is needed.

"These hours are necessary because there is a segment of the Harvard female population that is not found in gyms, not because they don't want to work out, but because for them working out in a co-ed gym is uncomfortable, awkward or problematic in some way," she told Boston University's Daily Free Press.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, in Washington D.C., said modesty may prevent some Muslim women from exercising in a co-ed environment.

"If the women are dressed in a manner that makes it more comfortable to exercise, they may not feel it’s appropriate for them to be viewed by men in that particular attire," he said.

But the change has angered students like Nicholas Wells, a junior who called the change a "lose-lose" situation in an opinion article he wrote for the Harvard Crimson newspaper.

"It is an unreasonable policy that is unjust to men and useless to women," he wrote.

"Rather than a genuine attempt to provide comfortable workout hours for women and religious observers who might be uncomfortable working out around men, this policy beats around the bush by offering the least utilized and the most inconvenient hours and gym space," he said. "No one benefits from women’s only hours."

...

Reports of the Harvard decision have sparked discussion in student publications across the country, including the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where an athletics department spokesman said such a measure would be "hard to pull off" in the campus' primary gym.

Full Article

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What do you think about Harvard's recent move to accommodate the needs of religious female students by establishing women-only hours at one of the campus gyms? It's about time? Fair? Not enough? Unnecessary? Discuss^TM.

If Jews would have asked there would have been a riot.....

...or at a minimum, complaints of "special treatment"

how do you know?

Ruach Hakodesh....

You think there would be so much of a difference?
In Montreal, YMCA agreed to install frosted windows in one of its gym because the Jewish Hassidic community complained that the boys from a nearby synagogue were distracted by the view of women exercising in tights and t-shirts. This was more radical than what the Muslims in Harvard asked for and it did provoke a lot of protest (after about a year YMCA replaced the frosted windows with windows with blinds). I looked at some old discussions and sure enough many reactions coming from French Quebecers were rather hostile (in the style of "if they come to our country they have to play by our rules and if they do not like our customs then let them return home") but usually they targeted all immigrants or a few groups in particular starting with Muslims, even though the latter did not play any part in this incident.

Of course HaRav knows such things.

Is that what we're calling him now?