Challenges For Chi Alpha at the University of Vermont

Our new Chi Alpha chap­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont is run­ning into some prob­lems get­ting rec­og­nized as a stu­dent group on cam­pus.

Accord­ing to an arti­cle in the Ver­mont Cyn­ic (the cam­pus paper):

SGA does not rec­og­nize clubs that dis­crim­i­nate. How­ev­er, some say they are about to.
Chi Alpha’s con­sti­tu­tion states “[All offi­cers] will pro­fess Chris­t­ian faith as expressed in the Nicene Creed, and they will sup­port the mis­sion and val­ues of nation­al Chi Alpha Cam­pus Ministries.”
Claire Chevri­er, SGA Stu­dent Activ­i­ties Chair, who is in charge of review­ing club­s’ con­sti­tu­tions for dis­crep­an­cies, said she was con­cerned about Chi Alpha’s pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion.
“When I saw that state­ment about the offi­cers I said ‘red flag, that doesn’t seem right,’” Chevri­er said. “I ini­tial­ly thought they would have to change that to abide by our dis­crim­i­na­tion pol­i­cy, but they were pas­sion­ate about keep­ing it in there because they were wor­ried about the longevi­ty of the club.”

It is prop­er for reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions to have reli­gious require­ments for lead­ers. I don’t get why some peo­ple don’t get this. Requir­ing a Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion to allow non-Chris­tians to lead it is like requir­ing a church to hire a non-Chris­t­ian pas­tor. It’s ludi­crous.

UPDATE: On Tues­day, March 30th the stu­dent gov­ern­ment vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to approve Chi Alpha at UVM with­out requir­ing any changes to their con­sti­tu­tion. Woot!