For decades, classes in the City University of New York system have not been in session during the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. That’s not the case for Eid al-Fitr, the holiest day on the Islamic calendar — even though Muslim students now make up a larger share of CUNY’s enrollment.
In 2021, Muslim students campaigned for a non-class day during Eid al-Fitr, saying they were “excluded” from the treatment afforded to major Christian and Jewish holidays. College officials denied the request. Under the university system’s religious accommodations policy, students who miss class for religious observances “have the right to request” accommodations and are “entitled to receive an equivalent opportunity” to make up missed assignments. A CUNY spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Many elements of higher education in the United States revolve around the western Christian calendar. Events and classes are seldom scheduled on Sundays, winter break is timed around Christmas, and spring break often coincides with Easter. Those who celebrate Christmas are accustomed to spending the holiday in church or with family, rather than taking an exam or sitting through a lecture.
In recent years, more students across the country — including at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Yale University, and the University of Washington — have called for their institutions to account for non-Christian religious holidays.
That movement dovetails with Jewish and Muslim students’ requests for increased support and protection from their campuses in the past month, as war between Israel and Hamas has fueled tensions. The academic calendar is another aspect of college life where many religious minority students feel like they aren’t fully included.
Each school should assess its campus climate for the needs of a diverse religious student population. And if they do that, they’ll be making very significant strides towards a more inclusive environment that all students can feel comfortable in.
Public schools have adapted to changing demographics in their area: Districts in New York, Virginia, Michigan, and other states are not in session on major holidays observed by traditionally underrepresented groups. But colleges haven’t widely adopted such changes.
One constraint is that colleges are bound by accreditation requirements to provide students with a certain number of contact hours, a measure of time spent in the classroom. If institutions don’t comply, they could lose access to federal financial aid. College classes only meet on certain days of the week, so non-class days are difficult to make up. What’s more, institutions tend to make their calendars three to five years in advance, and it’s hard to change them.
Instead of no-class days, many colleges have crafted or revised religious-accommodation policies to emphasize flexibility. Religious advocacy groups praise such policies, but colleges must work with faculty and students to ensure that the accommodations work in practice.
Here’s how some colleges have, or haven’t, responded in recent years to changing demographics in their student populations and growing representation of different religions.
Debating No-Class Days
Students are legally entitled to reasonable accommodations for their religious commitments. Some colleges go beyond that by declaring non-class days.
For Brandeis University, a private institution in Massachusetts, the Jewish calendar is woven into its academic planning, said Rabbi Seth Winberg, the university’s senior chaplain. The university, founded by the American Jewish community in 1948, does not hold classes during Rosh Hashanah, which lasts two days and celebrates the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Both holidays bar those observing from working, and the latter includes a fast.
Binghamton University, a State University of New York institution, holds non-class days during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. They have been dedicated as holidays on the university calendar since at least 1970, according to student handbook archives. According to Binghamton’s Hillel chapter, a Jewish campus organization, a quarter of undergraduate students identify as Jewish.
But some colleges have shifted away from non-class days, including SUNY’s University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. For nearly four decades, no classes were held at Buffalo on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; the university changed course in 2014. Per an FAQ page about the shift, campus officials said they wanted to create a “policy more appropriate for a state institution.” Officials from Buffalo did not respond to a request for comment.
Binghamton has no plans to follow suit, said Donald Loewen, the university’s vice provost for undergraduate education and enrollment management. Observing Jewish holidays is part of the institution’s “practice and tradition,” he said.
At Columbia College Chicago and the University of Wisconsin system, the first day of classes were scheduled during Rosh Hashanah in 2021, prompting resistance from many Jewish students. Campus officials at both institutions said at the time that students wouldn’t be penalized for absences.
A spokesperson from the University of Wisconsin at Madison told The Badger Herald, a campus newspaper, that “we have asked our registrar’s office to carefully review the academic calendar in all future years to identify potential religious conflicts well in advance so that we can make changes when appropriate.”
Since more faculty and students are discussing religious accommodations at Goucher College, in Baltimore, revising the academic calendar is “on the table,” said the Rev. Maeba Jonas, its chaplain and director of religious and spiritual life. Local public schools are not in session for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Eid al-Fitr, and Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated by many South Asian religious and cultural groups. More than a quarter of Goucher’s students are Jewish, according to Goucher Hillel.
Many professors cancel classes on certain holidays anyway, due to a drop in student attendance and the fact that faculty with children in the local schools would need child care, Jonas said.
Hillel International, which works to foster welcoming campus environments for Jewish students, “doesn’t ask” colleges to “cancel classes” or “completely readjust” the calendar, but to recognize and plan for Jewish holidays when creating it, said Mark Rotenberg, vice president for university initiatives at Hillel.
“Each school should assess its campus climate for the needs of a diverse religious student population,” Rotenberg said. “And if they do that, they’ll be making very significant strides towards a more inclusive environment that all students can feel comfortable in.”
When institutions prioritize interfaith planning, Rotenberg said, their students become “more aware of the diversity of our country” and “develop an enhanced appreciation” for the world’s religions.
Calendar Challenges
If colleges don’t require Christian students to attend class on Christmas, it seems fair that, for instance, Muslim students shouldn’t have to attend class on Eid al-Fitr. But there are hundreds of holidays celebrated by different religious and cultural groups. How should institutions decide who deserves a day off and who doesn’t?
Philip Pecorino, a philosophy professor at CUNY’s Queensborough Community College, told The Chronicle that he sees CUNY’s current policy — recognizing some Jewish holidays on the academic calendar and not those from other religions — as discriminatory. He has advocated to change it for most of his 50-year career.
Even though we don’t go to the class that day, we don’t have mental peace.
He said the practice is “not just simply favoring a group” but also allows “a group whose numbers grow smaller and smaller” as a proportion of the CUNY student body to influence which days all students and faculty can participate in instruction.
Data from CUNY’s 2022 Student Experience Survey show that 14 percent of the system’s students identify as Muslim and 3 percent identify as Jewish. This marks a shift over the last two decades: The 2002 survey found that 5 percent of students selected Islamic as their “religious preference” and 6 percent selected Jewish.
Pecorino argued in a 2018 blog post that granting more non-class days was not a solution. Instead, he wrote that CUNY should “close on no days” and instead allow community members to “absent themselves” as needed to observe their religion.
On its FAQ page about removing Jewish holidays from the calendar, the University at Buffalo said that Christmas and Easter are exceptions to the no-observances policy because the former is a “national holiday” and the latter “falls on a Sunday when classes are not in session.”
Another issue for colleges is that many non-Christian faiths follow a lunar or lunisolar calendar, meaning the dates of holidays change each year, and therefore must be reassessed for academic planning.
Changing the academic calendar once it’s set involves “going all the way up” to get approval and ensure it still complies with accreditation standards and financial-aid deadlines, said Tammy Aagard, a managing consultant at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
To avoid conflicts being raised at the last minute, Aagard said institutions should have “broad representation” on their calendar committee to consult on when major holidays occur and how to plan around them.
CUNY’s policy causes a “disturbance” in the typical rhythm at Queensborough Community College, Pecorino said. Each class missed for a holiday has to be made up, and sometimes classes are rescheduled on different days of the week — in other words, a Thursday class might be moved to Friday. This throws a wrench in work schedules and child-care arrangements for students not observing the holiday, making it difficult for many of them to attend rescheduled classes, Pecorino said.
At Goucher, Rev. Jonas said it would be “very difficult for professors to make up” time lost due to canceled classes, and closing the college entirely would have ripple effects in other areas of campus life, such as athletics.
But things are working just fine at Binghamton, Loewen told The Chronicle. Each year, the university’s calendar committee breaks down the year, “day by day,” to ensure contact hour minimums are met. Every semester looks different since the dates of Jewish holidays vary, he said.
Though there are “odd days” where, say, Monday classes meet on a Tuesday, non-class days during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are “widely appreciated” by the Binghamton community, because “everybody gets a day off,” Loewen said.
Rabbi Winberg, Brandeis’s chaplain, said he’s not aware of any movements to add more non-class days and that the university has policies in place for other students to get reasonable accommodations as needed. With Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu chaplains on staff, as well as on campus prayer spaces for each group, everyday practice is accessible for community members of those faiths, he said.
‘Inclusive Enough for Anyone’
As colleges enroll increasingly diverse student populations, officials often try to create policies that are “inclusive enough for anyone who wants to observe” a religious holiday, rather than rewriting the academic calendar, said Rebecca Russo, senior director of higher-education strategy for Interfaith America.
“Different campuses will grapple with non-class days depending on the size of a particular religious minority community within their campus community,” Russo said.
A law in Ohio that passed earlier this year requires public universities to grant students up to three excused absences for religious holidays and to ensure that professors provide students with reasonable accommodations.
Many institutions issue guidelines that professors are encouraged, but not required, to follow. Emory University publishes an interfaith calendar listing the holidays observed by “large numbers” of their community, and advises professors to avoid scheduling exams and major due dates on those days. Goucher, CUNY, and Buffalo take similar approaches.
Michigan State University revised its religious observance policy this year, which now encourages faculty to mindfully schedule major course assignments and ensures that students observing religious holidays are allowed additional excused absences.
Some students report running into resistance from professors. Others feel that religious-accommodation policies are not accessible or clearly communicated.
To bring more clarity to the process, Goucher recently amended its approach.
Throughout her career in chaplaincy, Rev. Jonas has noticed that many institutions “recycled and reused” a one-size-fits-all accommodation policy. The form previously used at Goucher was “burdensome,” she said, requiring students to obtain a signature from a clergyperson to “prove” that the student is an observant member of that religion.
This was “problematic,” she said. It implied that someone isn’t a “true religious, observant person” if they don’t regularly attend services. The policy was also out of step with how many students practice their religion; they tend to “find their religious community on campus” rather than joining a formal congregation, she added.
Now, the form is simplified and goes through the chaplain and the associate provost’s offices, taking the pressure off professors while offering them reassurance that the students’ requests are vetted as “appropriate for that holiday.”
Still, Abdul Siam, a sophomore at Goucher, said it’s “100 times harder” to practice Islam as a student in the United States than it was in his home country of Bangladesh. Siam said he’s had no trouble being excused from class during Eid al-Fitr. After he finishes his prayers, though, looming make-up assignments are the first thing on his mind.
Siam said that when he was growing up in Bangladesh, he became accustomed to no classes at all during the holy month of Ramadan, which involves fasting from sunrise to sunset. While he acknowledged that a month off wouldn’t be practical in the United States, he’d like to see greater understanding from faculty, staff, and fellow students of how fasting, spiritual reflection, work restrictions, and other components of non-Christian holidays affect those who observe.
He said some students feel they can’t miss class for religious holidays, even if an accommodation is offered, because they fear falling behind.
“Even though we don’t go to the class that day, we don’t have mental peace,” Siam said.
