I'd consume plenty of pork rinds in the time I'm allowed to work out to restore vital nutrients. And leave the bag to educate others on their essential vitamins.
Posted on 02/25/2008 8:19:03 AM PST by white trash redneck
Harvard University has moved to make Muslim women more comfortable in the gym by instituting women-only access times six hours a week to accommodate religious customs that make it difficult for some students to work out in the presence of men.
Men have not been allowed to enter the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center during certain times since Jan. 28, after members of the Harvard Islamic Society and the Harvard Women's Center petitioned the university for a more comfortable environment for women.
Harvard Islamic Society's Islamic Knowledge Committee officer Ola Aljawhary, a junior, said the women-only hours are being tested on a trial basis. The special gym hours will be analyzed over Spring Break to determine if they will continue, she said.
Aljawhary said that she does not believe that the women-only gym hours discriminate against men.
"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 said.
Though the policy was in part initiated by the school's Islamic group, Aljawhary said women-only hours are not a case of "minority rights trumping majority preference" and said women of different faiths have showed interest in the hours.
"We live together in one community, it only makes sense for everyone to compromise slightly in order for everyone to live happily," she said. "This matter is simple: Can't we just display basic decency and show tolerance and inclusion for people not a part of the mainstream majority?"
Harvard junior Nick Wells said he believes the women-only hours are inconvenient for the residents that live near the facility and discriminate against men.
"It is unfair to impose a stringent policy that inhibits students from using their own facility in order to further a useless policy that doesn't have any real effect," he said.
"I don't mind that Harvard is trying to give space to women and religious minorities, it's just that it seems that it's not making a real effort," Wells said. "Just one that is impractical and purely symbolic at the cost of people like myself."
Wells lives near the Quad, and said the response to and use of the women-only gym hours so far has been underwhelming.
Harvard freshman Kyle Harasimowicz said women-only gyms have been successful and women-only gym hours fill the same need.
"I guess as long as the time is divvied up fairly, there should be no issue," he said.
Boston University Islamic Society President Mohamed Serageldin said he thinks women-only gym hours would benefit Muslim women at BU.
"Because the FitRec is co-ed, a Muslim woman would most likely be compromising her modesty. He said modesty can be compromised on both the part of the man and the woman when physical action is involved."
BU's Fitness and Recreation Center facilities manager Alex Southall said FitRec's design easily accommodates sectioning off areas for groups.
"It depends on the arrangement with the particular group, so we aren't playing favorites with space, but the FitRec does have the capability to section off for special use," he said.
In the ideological constrcut known as "multiculturalism", Western civilization per se does not exist: the West is a force that steals, usurps, twists and destroys other, authentic cultures.
The West is not a culture: it is a vampire.
Segregation of women is thus a healing accomodation made by the evil vampires to the bearers of an authentic culture.
Complaints by Muslims are the complaints of a marginalized people yearning to reestablish their authentic cultural life.
Irish Catholics and Scots-Irish Baptists are, by definition, cultureless and their complaints are inauthentic and repressive - a desire to revive the evil vampirism of the West.
True, you don’t see much resistance from the left. It’s as if, in the butting of heads, we have the Islamists with hard skulls and minimal brain matter inside, and the leftists with only unprotected mush for brains. The issues are at odds, but the people espousing them are very differently outfitted.
Will the lefties ever gear up for the battle? Abandon their suicidal notions of tolerance and moral equivalence, and push back the barbarians?
And people laugh at the Brits. I don’t see where we’re doing any better at maintaining our culture.
...An early brochure, published in 1643, justified the College's [Harvard's] existence: "To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches."
Somehow, I doubt the Puritan Colonists were thinking about an Islamic ministry when they wrote that.
But here, establishing women-only hours (unless they're in the middle of the night) means that men lose some of their access to the gym. If the gym is women-only from 2-4 PM on Wednesday, and that's my usual gym time, my options are now restricted to cater to these particular religious needs, something that doesn't seem to be true in your other examples. Accommodating Muslim women means penalizing all men (or at least all men who don't actively want women to be segregated). If Muslim women want to establish a new gym that is women-only, and use their own resources to do it, I don't mind. But if I were a Harvard student, I would be irritated about any Harvard resource being limited to me on these grounds.
Hear, hear! That was why I quit going to our local gym, years ago.
Women only hours & co-ed hours, but no men only hours. Then, as if that weren't enough, they opened a 'women's only' (Curves) gym nearby. Heaven forfend, though that a 'men only' establishment be allowed; that is 'discrimination'.
Assimilate or emigrate. (or re-emigrate).
Harvard has a gym? Who knew?
“We live together in one community, it only makes sense for everyone to compromise slightly in order for everyone to live happily,”
I have but a very small nose, and you such a large tent...
bump
My leftist sister went to Harvard for her Masters. I am going to send her this article to her to see what she has to say about this.
The school gym should be open for everyone at the same hours. It’s not fair to the men at the university to have the hours they are able to work out cut. If some women don’t want to work out with men in the same gym they should get a membership off campus to a gym that does ladies only hours or that is completely woman only.
I'd consume plenty of pork rinds in the time I'm allowed to work out to restore vital nutrients. And leave the bag to educate others on their essential vitamins.
.
Harvard College - Founded in 1636, named for its first benefactor Minister John Harvard, who left his library and half his estate to it. Offered academic courses based on the English university model but consistent with the prevailing Puritan philosophy of the first colonists. Many of its early graduates became ministers. A 1643 brochure stated the college existed “To advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches.”
Seems like straight men could make the same argument about being separated from homosexual men that these Muslim women do —— their modesty requires them not to be ogled by men who might a sexual interest in them.
So how about it Harvard - some hours for straight men only - no gays.
If women are covered from head to toe what difference dows it make if men are in the room too?
Simply mind boggling!
In the ideological constrcut known as "multiculturalism", Western civilization per se does not exist: the West is a force that steals, usurps, twists and destroys other, authentic cultures.
The West is not a culture: it is a vampire.
Segregation of women is thus a healing accomodation made by the evil vampires to the bearers of an authentic culture.
Complaints by Muslims are the complaints of a marginalized people yearning to reestablish their authentic cultural life.
Irish Catholics and Scots-Irish Baptists are, by definition, cultureless and their complaints are inauthentic and repressive - a desire to revive the evil vampirism of the West.
Spot on, wideawake! 668, what wideawake said!
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