U. proposal could derail education, critics say

A proposed accommodations policy for students who object to course curriculum at the University of Utah is being called by one critic a means of derailing the "educational enterprise."

"What point is there in an education if it is to be censored and circumscribed at any moment by the demands of students that they be allowed to maintain the views they already have?" asked Jon M. Bauman, a lawyer and adjunct law professor at the University of Idaho College of Law.

U. President Michael K. Young called Bauman's basis for criticism a "willful misreading" of the policy. Young said he has run the policy by a "number of very good institutions" and has not received any negative comments. "I've actually got a number of people asking for copies."

Young added that anyone "stupid enough" to say the policy affords students a "veto" on classroom content and that the document derails the education process, "hardly deserves a response."

Bauman, who earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the U., said accommodations for student prejudice would invite "sloth and mere truculence among people just leaving adolescence."

In an e-mail to the Deseret Morning News, Bauman, who has relatives teaching at the U., questioned what impact an adopted policy would have on the school.

Others in academe have similar concerns.

One consequence yet to be understood is whether the virtually unprecedented policy in higher education will have a "chilling" effect on interaction between U. faculty and students, according to outgoing Utah State University President Kermit Hall.

"If you believe education is designed to create a free market in which ideas are contested," Hall said, "then it is hard to see that market operating fully if you reserve for those who are to be taught the power for them to say what they refuse to learn."

What long-term impact could such a policy have?

"It could make the school more attractive to students who do not want to have their particular views challenged," added Hall, who is set to begin his new job as president of New York's state university at Albany.

Any worry over the policy, Hall said, should be less about ideology and politics and more about the law of unintended consequences.