Within the five years since Tufts garnered attention for its incident of discrimination, relations between religious groups on campus and homosexual students have been ameliorated.
"[Student group discrimination] hasn't come up this year," Tufts Community Union Judiciary (TCUJ) member sophomore Shiva Bhashyam said.
In 2000, Julie Catalano, a lesbian student, attempted to run for an official position in the Tufts Christian Fellowship (TCF). Catalano was denied the position because her sexual orientation went against the code of ethics and morals that the members of the group insisted to obey.
The TCUJ found that the TCF had discriminated against Catalano because the members of the TCF treated her differently than they would a heterosexual student in the same situation. The TCUJ, however, also concluded that groups are allowed to set their own standards of beliefs for their members as long as the rules are applied equally to everyone.
The ruling sparked an uproar on campus, with many groups claiming that the ruling undermined the nondiscrimination policy because it allows group to discriminate as long as they did so equally.
The incident continued to produce heated discussion between students. "There was some important dialogue between certain members of the [Tufts Christian Fellowship] and the [Tufts Transgender, Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Coalition] leadership at the time," former University Chaplain Scotty McLennan said.
"I think the important and exciting news is in the area of new, effective forms of interfaith dialogue, not in the perennial 'tensions' [between the groups]," McLennan said.
McLennan is currently the Dean of Religious Life at Stanford University.
Since the 2000 incident, the TCUJ has halted discrimination among student groups on campus. Dona Yarbrough, Director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Center at Tufts has been at the University since 2003, and said that there have not been any issues or controvsersies involving the LGBT and TCF communities since her arrival.
In order to establish and receive recognition as a student group on campus, group organizers must write up a constitution. "In the constitution, they have to say how the structure of the group is going to be. There are certain rules they have to follow from the Pachyderm, but aside from that it's pretty open," Bhashyam said.
Christian groups on other campuses, however, have successfully filed lawsuits against their respective colleges or universities, stating that the First Amendment's right to freedom of religion was being tampered with by the non-discrimination policies.
According to the Stanford Daily newspaper, in 2003, two students at Ohio State University complained to the administration that the Christian Legal Society on campus did not allow homosexuals or non-Christians to join. In order to avoid confrontation with this group, Ohio State altered its non-discrimination policy to allow groups with deeply held religious beliefs to be exempt from the policy.
Some colleges, such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Arizona State University, have chosen not to back down to these groups and are prepared to enter into legal battles so they do not have to change their non-discrimination policies.
Most colleges, however, do not have any such problems with conservative Christian groups at odds over discrimination laws.
"I have been at Stanford for over [four] years, and no public incident of discrimination of this sort has occurred during my time," McLennan said.
At Tufts, the University has since maintained its tolerance for all people, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation following the incident in 2000. Following the indicent, the TCF was later reinstated by a review panel but warned to not discriminate any further with regard to the membership and leadership positions in the group.
