This fall, much of the campus was outraged by Christian a cappella group Psalm 100’s highly publicized dismissal of one of its members, Will Thomason, because he was gay (or rather, according to the group, because he had failed to live in accordance with the Bible).
This outrage was merited — many times over. But any action that merits such a reaction should also be used as an opportunity to improve. In this case, students who care about the rights of student groups to limit membership should do their part to contribute to the process of redefining these rights, which the University has undertaken in the aftermath of the Psalm 100 incident.
Like the old non-discrimination policy, the new version will include a clause preventing discrimination based on qualities like gender, race and sexual orientation. But the central question is whether the University will continue to recognize groups that limit their membership based on beliefs.
The upside to an outright ban of such groups is obvious: the elimination of situations like the one Psalm 100 presented this fall. There are numerous variations of this policy, generally referred to as an all-comers policy, and they’ve been employed with varying degrees of success by at least a few of UNC’s peer institutions.
The drawbacks to such policies, however, are severe: campus groups related to religious or political beliefs would have difficulty complying with the policy and may even be forced to surrender recognition as official UNC student groups, depending on the exact terms of the policy.
These groups add much to the intellectual climate of UNC. They bring diversity of thought and opinion and are crucial components of the dialogue on this campus about topics ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Obamacare. UNC would be a lesser place without them. The current policy should be tweaked, but it shouldn’t be rewritten to wholly disallow belief-based groups.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the Psalm 100 situation was the arbitrariness with which they enforced an already vague constitution (which specified that its members live in accordance with the teachings of the Bible).
By asking belief-based groups to provide a document which would specify their criteria for membership, this arbitrariness and lack of clarity could be avoided in the future. This would both force the group’s leaders to be concrete and specific about what, exactly, they believe and allow incoming members to have complete information about what they are getting themselves into.
It might be overkill to make these documents mandatory. But they should be promoted as a way for a group which may at some point feel compelled to dismiss a member to be transparent and proactive about the circumstances under which it would do this.
