Iowa regents to review policies around religious inclusiveness

COUNCIL BLUFFS - In response to the University of Iowa's dedication of two prayer rooms for the Muslim Student Association and backlash from a national atheist group, the Board of Regents on Thursday said it will review its policies around such practices.

Regent Subhash Sahai started the conversation during the regents' meeting in Council Bluffs by asking UI President Bruce Harreld whether he thinks the university should provide a special place on campus for any specific religious group to pray.

Harreld said such spaces are appropriate so long as they are not exclusive, meaning anyone of any faith and any gender can use them. And Harreld assured Sahai that they are open and accessible.

'I can assure there is at least one Christian that has prayed there,” he said. 'Me.”

Sahai asked how the rooms reconcile with the First Amendment, and Harreld said as long as the university isn't stopping anyone from praying or practicing a specific religion in a specific space, they are on safe ground.

Aimee Claeys, associate counsel for the Board of Regents, confirmed for Sahai that the university is not violating policy or law by providing the UI Muslim Student Association prayer rooms in the Iowa Memorial Union.

'It's a very delicate balance here - university campuses are unique environments in this fashion,” Claeys said. 'It's a fine line we're walking here. But I think we're doing it cautiously and carefully.”

And, Harreld stressed, 'It's the right thing to do.”

'We don't want to be a community of exclusion,” Harreld said. 'We want to be a community of collaboration and inclusion. And so it's in the spirit of that, that we actually think it's the right thing to do.”

But the Freedom From Religion Foundation has questioned the appropriateness of the prayer spaces - along with a long-standing university chapel.

'The presence of such religious venues on a public campus raises a number of issues,” according to a news release from the group.

Contrary to Harreld's comments, the group asserts the areas are 'exclusively used by specific religious groups such as Christians and Muslims,” violating the 'establishment clause” of the First Amendment. Because the religious groups using the rooms practice gender separation, the advocacy group says it also is concerned that UI is 'facilitating the discriminatory practice of gender segregation.”

'State-run colleges have a constitutional obligation to not endorse, advance, or aid religion,” the group's staff attorney, Patrick Elliott, wrote in a letter to Harreld. 'When a government entity like the University of Iowa creates prayer areas for specific religions and imposes religious rules upon students (removing shoes, segregating men and women), it has unconstitutionally entangled itself with religion.”

The group suggested the chapel and Muslim prayer rooms could, essentially, lead the university down a rabbit hole, resulting in other religious requests for similar facilities. A Hindu group already has asked. Thus, the group wants the university to shutter the Muslim prayer areas and remove Christian symbols from the chapel.

In response to those concerns and questions, Board of Regents President Bruce Rastetter on Thursday said Mark Braun, chief operating officer for the board, will consider procedures related to religious activities and spaces on the university campuses as part of a broader policy review in June.