Condemned to Purgatory

The Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Fellowship (HRCF) has recently been criticized for requiring that its officers ascribe to particular principles of faith, including Christ’s resurrection and the existence of the Holy Spirit. The Undergraduate Council is withholding HRCF’s funding until its constitution is changed to meet the council’s religious non-discrimination guidelines. The Committee on College Life is reviewing the group’s official status, linked to its ability to use University facilities, poster, sponsor events and maintain its e-mail account and web space.

The College and the council are right to be concerned that HRCF’s requirement is discriminatory and that, as such, the group must change it or else lose its funding and recognition. While, as HRCF points out, the relevant College rules only explicitly mandate non-discrimination in membership, as opposed to leadership, HRCF is out of line with the principles of the College’s guidelines. That HRCF may technically be within the rules only highlights the need for the College to revise those rules to ensure that groups cannot have discriminatory criteria for any positions.

The dispute between HRCF and the College goes to the heart of the role of a student group in a university community. As HRCF points out, student groups create spaces within a school for students who share a particular set of beliefs. In exchange for recognition by the school, groups must open themselves up to all students. A group can preserve a core identity, but the ability to participate in the organization and its leadership roles must be open to all students if that group is to be considered a legitimate part of the College community.

Instead, HRCF is demanding the recognition and services of the University while deliberately refusing to reciprocate by making all its activities open to all students. If HRCF remains intransigent, the Committee on College Life should revoke HRCF’s student group status next term.

The Undergraduate Council’s charter is broader than the College’s rules, prohibiting student organizations that discriminate in any way from receiving funding. The council is right to withhold money from HRCF. That funding comes to the council directly from nearly all the students here; the obligation to spend it in ways that benefit all students—and not provide offices open only to a select few—is obvious.

At the very least, student organizations exist to serve their own members. For all students to be permitted as members and only some allowed to be officers is entirely unfair and denies members the opportunity to participate equally in the group.

Religious student groups other than HRCF have found neither the council’s nor the College’s policy particularly cumbersome. Hillel, the Islamic Society and the Catholic Students Association, for example, all meet the non-discrimination requirement, as do non-religious identity groups like the Black Students Association and the Radcliffe Union of Students. None of these groups has been overrun by outsiders seeking to commandeer the organizations, the risk HRCF claims it would run were it to allow non-Christians to hold office.

Besides, if Jason L. Lurie ’05, who brought this inequity to the council’s attention, tried to run for president of HRCF, the outgoing officers—who choose their successors—would never select him, a leader it considers unfaithful to the group’s purpose.

All students are welcome to exercise their freedom of association, as HRCF claims, but if they choose to discriminate they are not entitled to recognition as an official student group. HRCF would not be subjected to anti-religious discrimination any more than final clubs are being subjected to anti-male discrimination.