For those interested in christian privilege, here is a quick summary:

http://atheism.about.com/od/christianismnationalism/p/ChristianPriv.htm

1. This site reported of the conflict
2. This site reported the policy
3. This site took a position in the conflict
4. It is a reasonable expectation that Alpha Chi knew of the policy and how it conflicted with theirs.
5. The experience of the BSA is still fresh on everyone’s mind. They chose to follow a path and then tried to reverse that path by bringing religion into the equation and they were not allowed to do so. No it is not at the scale of the BSA but the comparison is valid.

What do I need to be corrected on? I have used the information I received.

I have made it clear that it is my opinion that as soon as Chi Alpha received and accepted money from the university they are bound by their rules. I have not been told that my assertions are wrong and how.

If there is information that I have ignored, please correct me and i will be very happy to reassess my position, but so far I have not seen anything that will lead me to believe that Chi Alpha’s religious rights were violated when they were bound by accepting money from an organization with conflicting tenants.

accusing me of moral equivalences that I did not make

Have you or have you not tried to ask myself, Pyria Lynn (sp?) and others, what we would do if (fill in the blank) such as the example I gave above?

Those most certainly are more equivalencies attempting to be drawn for the sole purpose of you trying to make a point in your favor.

When that’s pointed out, you have avoided responding directly to how that it is true, and instead attempt to then end the conversation by claiming you’ve attemted to make no such comparisons by attempts of intimidation via moderation and deletion of posts.

As for this

If you persist in falsely stating what I believe, accusing me of moral equivalences that I did not make, or generally assigning to me beliefs I do not have, I’ll have no choice but to remove your comments.

The intent has not been to falsely state what you believe, but to relate in my opinion what your arguments imply.

The Cornell campus offers geographic challenges that might be held to allow special consideration for the peculiarities of student oriented religious organizations. Ezra Cornell’s farm was at Ithaca, but not in Ithaca. As it stood in the 1860′s when the University was founded, the farm that became much of the campus was on the hills above the town to the east. Of course, subsequent development produced a ‘college town’ business center off the south end of the campus, but the ravine there and the one to the north of the old campus provide a remarkably definite separation between the town and the campus.

Map views show rather clearly that much of the separation remains in place, despite the bridges. Historically there was an effort to provide a substantial center for student connected religious groups. Besides the campus chapel with weekly services, there is a religious center so large as to stand out as its own quadrangle in campus maps, “Annabelle Taylor Hall”, if I remember correctly, at the southwest corner of the campus on the street that goes from the college town to the Student Union, but north of the (southern) Gorge.

If Alpha Chi was working out of that university center, somebody missed the boat when the terms of their use of the facility were being sorted out.

I can understand that Cornell University, in particular, might choose to be a bit lax about supervising these campus connected religious organizations in order to get them to offer services to the students on campus, but there is a serious need to do that very carefully.

Since when does an adviser/non-student-leadership-person have the power to remove student leadership from a student organization? It would be one thing if the organization had formally elected to remove Mr. Donohoe, but that does not appear to be what happened.

One might compare the situation to the constraints under which an actual fraternity operates. While the fraternity does have to operate within university policy guidelines, local housing ordinances, and the rules of its national organization, and to listen to the advice of its adviser and the Alumni Chapter, the actual operating decisions are the responsibility of the current student members, and they elect their leadership. Usually there are provisions for the removal of these officers and chapter self-governance, but they involve formal action by the relevant governing boards.

These due process considerations would seem to have been folded down into a very small portfolio that Mr. Herman carried around inside his head.

You are repeating what others have said and making inferences from those claims. You are factually incorrect.

Stefano,

If you persist in falsely stating what I believe, accusing me of moral equivalences that I did not make, or generally assigning to me beliefs I do not have, I’ll have no choice but to remove your comments.

I would long ago have stopped you from doing this to anyone else and – though I err on the side of lenience when it comes to comments directed towards me – my patience is up.

And if I remember my history correct, I believe that a basis in this country exist whereby a philanthropist or funding entity is allowed to have its own rules for it’s endowment. If I were a philanthopist, I would want that. I would hope the said University would want the same, too.

This Chi Apha situation is sort of like dad giving you $20 so that you can take a date to Mickey Dee’s and to a matinee and you wind up buy beer instead. As a teenage boy, you think it’s a great way to get into your date’s pants so what inevitably happens is that your date rebukes you and your dad finds the beer cans in the back seat of the car. What would dad do? Chi Alpha’s supporting entity is at fault here for not holding steadfast to it’s own rules. Where’s the discussion to that?

Follow the damn money, people! Protest the school and not Chi Alpha. Because, after all, Chi Alpha has a right to exsist but it hasn’t followed the rules of dear ol’ dad.

I don’t think that’s a comparable issue as long as Chi Alpha believes there is no such thing as marital sex for same-sex couples. There are other Christian groups who are accepting of same-sex relationships, and insist only that gay people abide by the same constraints that heterosexuals must. Why can’t the university fund one of them instead?