Posted on 11/27/2005 12:16:08 AM PST by seastay
LOS ANGELES – The college plans of six students at a Murietta school have sparked a lawsuit that could have implications for academia nationwide. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, contends that officials with the University of California system discriminated against students from Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murietta when they decided that some of the school's religious-viewpoint courses – such as "Christianity's Influence on American History" – do not meet the UC system's admissions standards.
The complaint, pushed by the Association of Christian Schools International, alleges the university's decision violates the First Amendment religious-practice rights of the students, including two who plan to attend UC San Diego.
A Dec. 12 hearing has been set on a request by UC lawyers to dismiss the complaint.
The case is being closely tracked by free speech advocates, public educators and Christian leaders who are concerned about the impact the case could have on state school admissions policies and the ability of some Christian schools to teach their core beliefs.
The lawsuit "is one piece of the culture war that is ongoing in our country for a number of years," said Robert Tyler, who represents the students and heads the group Advocates for Faith and Freedom. "It's important for our clients to take a stand at this time to prevent the intolerance of the UC and to prevent them from attempting to secularize private Christian schools."
"This appears to be coming in as the first wave in an assault," said Barmak Nassirian, an official with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, who sees the lawsuit as an effort by a special interest group to improperly shape admissions requirements.
UC lawyers say Calvary Chapel students are free to study as they choose, but they still must take courses approved by the university system – or alternately take an SAT subject test – to gain admission to one of the UC's 10 campuses.
Christopher Patti, a UC lawyer, said that in the last four years, 32 students from Calvary Chapel have applied for UC schools, and 24 were admitted.
The lawsuit "has more to do with the university's ability to set admissions standards than it does with the plaintiffs' ability to teach what they want," Patti said. "We don't try to limit what they teach."
Lawyers for the plaintiffs contend this dispute came up two years ago when UC admissions officials began closely examining Calvary Chapel's courses and texts that emphasized Christianity. Among the rejected courses were biology classes with texts by A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press, both conservative Christian publishers. Courses titled "Special Providence: American Government," and "Christianity and Morality in American Literature," were also rejected.
The lawsuit argues it is unfair these courses were nixed while others titled "Western Civilization: The Jewish Experience," and "Intro to Buddhism," were approved.
Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at Virginia-based First Amendment Center at the Freedom Forum, said the supporters might have a valid complaint.
"I think the university has the right to require entering students to have a foundation on the subjects the university thinks help provide a preparation for higher education," he said "But I think the schools have a point when they say other courses from other institutions are allowed in, but when a course has 'Christian' in the title it seems to raise a red flag."
Patti said of the roughly 1,000 courses submitted for approval every year, 15 percent are rejected for reasons such as lacking proper content or being too narrowly focused.
It is the Calvary Chapel's biology courses that have sparked the most debate.
Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, which fights attempts to teach intelligent design and creationism as science in public schools, called the biology texts used by the school "unabashedly creationist" books that explain evolution in a confusing manner. Creationism is the belief that God created the universe and all life.
Branch noted that the preface of the Bob Jones University's biology textbook states: "If conclusions contradict the word of God, the conclusions are wrong no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them."
"I don't think the UC is insisting that incoming students accept evolution," Branch said. "They want them to have a good understanding of it. That's the purpose of education, to impart understanding."
But plaintiff lawyer Wendell Bird, who argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1987 Louisiana case dealing with creationist instruction in public schools, said it is wrong to interpret the lawsuit solely as a fight over creationism.
"This case would exist even if the science course had been accepted" by UC admissions officials, he said, noting other courses were also rejected.
Nassirian said he sees the lawsuit's proponents as attempting to win an academic debate outside the academic world.
"You cannot get a victory in court on science, as Galileo learned," he said.
In California, Asians are not considered to be minorities as far as education is concerned.
One would think the parents of students attending a BJU feeder school would have preferred their kids to go to BJU to continue that train of education.
Ah, a Creation Conspiracy! I love it!
I knew you'd agree.
"(The kids are being used) but it is by their parents, not the university."
I can tell you are not a mom of one of these kids, we just want our kids to attend a high school that is both safe and academically sound, Christian Schools in CA are the best choice for those reasons. People who think we are putting our kids on those schools just to prove a point do not know what it is like raise kids in CA today.
It is just the opposite this is the university making a big deal over nothing, for example Thirty years ago, children would have not been selectively weeded out to prove a point by Universities such that Christian values cannot be taught along side secular values outside the University which has nothing to do with the kids academic potential, this is the UC doings to prove a point that Christian values are not worthy academically in today’s climate since Christians are no longer the majority.
We parents are just trying to give our kids the best education possible, in very a very difficult environment, that is hostel to both Christians and western values in CA today.
""You cannot get a victory in court on science, as Galileo learned," he said"
This man seems to have a poor grasp of history...it was Galileo who ran afoul of church teachings and got himself in trouble with the ecclesiatical rulers(the inquisition) of the day.
They should take the special SAT tests the college hinted at or even ACT tests(which divide the testing over four core groups including history). The Christian kids will show that they are proficient in the subject that college is concerned about and the college should have no other objections...unless the college simply wants to deny children who are Christians admittence!
The public schools across the country are bad. There are other choices than Fundamentalist Christian Schools that offer good educations (Catholic Schools for one).
I am sure many of these schools do a good job in English and Math, maybe even history. But when you've been told for 18 years that science is lies and the realm of atheisism, then a huge segment of life is cut off for you.
It is the parents that are responsible for this and no one else, including the UC system.
See Furball4paws' insightful post 28. It's just as likely that the (possibly legitimate) examples of the history & literature courses are the strawmen being used by the creationists to slip in the (bogus) creationist biology courses.
Now you get to the real point of the suit - to force the public Universities in California to accept Creation Biology, and other stuff as equivalent to real Biology and other stuff. Another, more subtle, wedge into the classroom.That is a fascinating hypothesis. If that's what's really going on, then expect to see more lawsuits popping up in other states after the judge rules on this one. (Then it'll graduate to a theory. :-)
If the suit is successful, then the Creos will argue "See, even the UC (one of the most liberal) system accepts the teaching of Creationism, so why not teach it in the public schools. The suit is a trial balloon in a search for other strategies.
I think we should give our institutions of higher learning a little more credit. Creation biology is not science and never will be. I would bet on Dec 12, the UC attorneys will get the case dimissed.
No, this is in no way the same thing as affirmative action. Affirmative action candidates were getting into the UCs with 800 SAT scores. Affirmative action candidates were getting into Boalt Law School with mid-150 LSAT scores. They were vastly inferior performers on standardized tests (and at least for the law school (not sure on the undergrads), had GPAs WELL below the rest of the class). Additionally, affirmative action admits almost always finished at the bottom of the class. In Texas, for instance, their median class rank in the law school was the bottom 15%.
What these students are requesting is that their courses receive equal treatment by the admissions office.
They could take a standardized test and move on. My question is why they should have to do this when others don't.
I don't know if we can consider the SAT II subject tests that difficult, either. Everyone that I know of did better on them than they did the SAT.
I know a multitude of people who scored straight 800s on those things and didn't come close to that on the SAT. In short, I question their validity.
Until I see any evidence, I'm going to assume that their test scores were legit. The UCs would have used that as a defense if it was available.
Well of course "Creation Science" is an oxymoron, and any self-respecting institution of higher education will give zero credit for any course based on that. And the Christian students are being given the opportunity to take a test to demonstrate knowledge in the subject matter. For a private university, I would say that the UC administrators were spot-on. But UC is a government institution, which raises all sorts of church-state issues.
My solution: Shut down government universities and colleges. Then at Bible-Thumber U those students who want to can study Snake-Handling 101. At Darwin U they can study the evolution of venomous snakes. Everybody happy.
bttt
[Courses titled "Special Providence: American Government," and "Christianity and Morality in American Literature," were also rejected. The lawsuit argues it is unfair these courses were nixed while others titled "Western Civilization: The Jewish Experience," and "Intro to Buddhism," were approved.]
If this is correct, then this case is about religious discrimination.
It's nothing to do with function. Most of the differences in most highly conserved proteins are phenotypically neutral. If it were function, then whales and whale sharks would be more similar to each other, than whales are to mice.
And this, of course, becomes a circular argument because you only get here by first assuming that evolution from a common ancestor is true.
That's false too. You can take 20 blind gene sequences, run a maximum parsimony analysis, and the sequences will give you a tree, without any prior assumptions. Then if you look at which sequence is which, animals with close evolutionary relationships turn out to be the closest together on the tree.
Stop believing the propaganda, and check this out for yourself.
[The problem is that a degree form Joe's Bible College just doesn't carry much weight in the real world.]
I would argue that a degree from MOST colleges doesn't carry the weight that it used to.
Unless you pick a specific degree from a college with a reputation for excellence in that particular field, you're getting more symbolism than substance.
So if we compare all the small subunit rRNA sequences - several hundred by now - we can't learn anything from them?
How can you say comparing genome sequences makes no sense outside of a given theory when the data is not available that ostensibly is meant to test and confirm your statement/assumption?
We may not have enough full genomes, but we have lots and lots of data for individual proteins and rRNAs. And you know as well as I do that they indicate an evolutionary tree.
I think that this may be a national problem. My daughter got a 29 on the ACT but one of our local state subsidized universities wouldn't accept her Christian HS diploma (a school that had been around for over 20 years)
Another state university required higher minimum ACT scores if you didn't graduate from a public HS
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