University Students Urge Change in Student Calendar to Avoid Conflict with Holy Days

An ad hoc Committee of Jewish Students at Northwestern University urged University president Robert Strotz to change the schedule for New Student Week next September because it conflicts with the start of the Jewish High Holy Days. The appeal asked for a decision within one week, declaring that “otherwise we will be forced to take action as so many other Jews have done recently, to end the discrimination which faces us.” The appeal was made in a letter which noted that a similar situation occurred two years ago and that while protests from Jewish students failed to obtain a change in the scheduling, the University “issued a verbal promise that it would take the Jewish calendar into account when drawing up an academic calendar in the future.” The letter added that “we ask it to honor its promise.” The letter did not indicate what kind of action the students were contemplating if the appeal failed a second time.

The letter was signed by representatives of the Student Forum, the Chicago Jewish Student Press, the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation, the American Students for Israel, the United Synagogue Youth, the Chicago coordinator for the youth division of the Jewish Defense League, the Jewish Student Movement, the Association for Torah Advancement, the Jewish Radical Action Committee, and the Jewish Reconstructionist University Fellowship. The appeal declared that the Jewish student groups had previously asked the University Calendar Committee to change the 1971 schedule from its present start on Sept. 19, a Sunday evening, and have it start on Tuesday, Sept., 21. Recalling the situation two years ago, the letter said that then, “as well as now,” the University had copies of the Jewish calendar, had “received many pleas to change the date of the start of the student week and that, on both occasions, our requests were denied.”