Poison Ivy: Lessons of The "Yale 5"

Chaim Dovid Zwiebel

On September 13, 1997, Rachel Wohlgelerenter got married.

But wait, hold the mazal tovs -- for her chasuna is not scheduled to take place until Chanuka 5758.

Rachel Wohlgelerenter, you see, is a freshman at Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut, one of the five by-now-famous Orthodox Jewish students who sought but were denied an exemption from Yale's requirement that all unmarried freshmen and sophomores under the age of 21 reside in one of the college's co-ed residence halls. She and her choson accordingly went through with a civil marriage ceremony months before the date of their actual chasuna, so that she would officially be "married" and thereby eligible to claim exemption from Yale's on-campus residence requirement.

Alas, no such convenient option presented itself to the four other Orthodox students who took religious exception to the immodest environment presented by Yale dormitory life; they have yet to have found their basherte. And so, unable to look for a justice of the peace to help resolve their problem, they are looking for a different type of justice -- a judicial ruling that Yale's refusal to accommodate their religious beliefs by allowing them to reside off campus or by making available single-sex residential facilities violates a variety of their constitutional and legal rights.

The Classroom and Beyond

There is no anti-Orthodox bias at Yale, the college's spokesmen insist. On the contrary: Yale makes kosher food readily available. It accommodates students who are unable to take exams scheduled for religious holidays. It has found a way to enable Sabbath observers to bypass the electronic security system that would otherwise make it impossible for Orthodox Jews to enter their residence facilities on Shabbasos and Yomim Tovim.

But accommodation has its limits. Yale's bulldog-like insistence that students reside on campus in co-ed dormitory facilities is part and parcel of its educational mission, its spokesmen assert, and simply cannot be waived.

As explained by Dean Richard H. Brodhead in a letter to Agudath Israel of America president Rabbi Moshe Sherer, "the students' request in this case... runs counter not just to a well-advertised requirement of Yale College but also to one of our deep institutional values, the education that derives through living together in a collegiate community." Or, in the words of Ivan G. Marcus, professor of Jewish history at Yale, in a letter to the editor of one of the Anglo-Jewish weeklies:

"Yale is not only about classes and a degree. It is also about mixing, meeting, arguing, learning to defend, being different and dealing with different people. It is about people and ideas 24 hours each day, not just in the classes a few hours each week."

For Yale, therefore, there is no room to allow a handful of Orthodox tznius fanatics to opt out of the full Yale experience. If it means having to defend a lawsuit, so be it, for one does not yield on a matter of principle.

(Or is it a matter of principal? So long as the five students would be willing to pay the college's approximately $7,000 annual room and board fee, the administration would not insist that they actually reside on campus. Indeed, in a letter to the students' attorney Nathan Lewin, Yale deputy general counsel William D. Stempel expressly pledged that no disciplinary action would be taken against the students for failing to live on campus, consistent with Yale's general policy of "not monitor[ing] where students sleep." It would appear that students can obtain the benefits of the 24-hour-a-day Yale melting pot simply by paying for it, even without experiencing it. Top that, Harvard!)

Purposeful Confrontation

There are several points to be made, I think, about the confrontation between the "Yale 5" and the school's adamant administration.

First, and in certain ways foremost, the entire Orthodox community -- including those who would never even consider college, let alone a college like Yale, as an acceptable option for themselves or their children -- should take pride in the firm stance taken by these five students. Alone among their many peers, Jews and Gentiles alike, these young men and women have dared object to the objectionable. In so doing, they have proclaimed, for all the world to hear, that Judaism demands of its adherents a code of moral conduct totally incompatible with the loose and promiscuous atmosphere that prevails in a modern-day college dormitory. K'vod shomayim has been enhanced -- and for that we can all celebrate.

Second, the legal cause being pursued in court is worthy, just, and deserving of the broader Orthodox community's support. One might fairly question whether the students, especially those whose families do not live in the New Haven area, would not have been better off simply avoiding the problem by enrolling in some unenlightened college (Columbia, perhaps?) that has yet to discover the educational benefits of compelling 18-, 19- and 20-year-old students to reside in co-ed dormitories. But the importance of the non-discrimination principle they are seeking to establish is incontrovertible.

If Yale is legally entitled to close its doors to students whose religious beliefs are incompatible with immorality -- or, for that matter, to discriminate more generally on the basis of religion -- so too are other schools similarly entitled. Orthodox Jews have a stake in a rule of law that precludes such discrimination. We may freely choose not to attend any given college, or any college whatsoever, but the law should guarantee that the choice is ours alone, not forced on us by some insensitive college administrators.

We Are All Yalies

Finally, we would do well to draw a sobering lesson from the "Yale 5": how vigilant one must be when venturing beyond the protective warmth of the "four cubits of halacha" and encountering institutions of secular acculturation.

The lesson has broad application. True (and happily so), not too many of us have to deal with the precise challenge facing the students at Yale. But virtually all of us do find it necessary, in one form or another, to confront the outside world -- whether working in jobs, studying for professions, reading the newspapers, dealing with neighbors, or even walking the streets. Virtually all of us find it necessary to strike some balance between isolation and interaction, between insularity and exposure. Virtually all of us must therefore learn how to recognize the danger of outside infection and resist it.

So long as we are in this imperfect world, awaiting the redemptive power of Moshiach, the Yale dormitory is all around us.