As a Catholic, Jesus is my homeboy. No, seriously, I love the guy! Being at The George Washington University Law School the past two and a half years has been hard. In 1L year, it was the first time in my life where I had school on Good Friday and Easter Monday (look it up!). However bad I had thought The George Washington Law School and religion conflicted before, nothing has compared to the clash between law school and the Jewish faith as much as this year.

GW exams occur from April 18 to April 29 with May 2 serving as a “Make-Up Day for Examinations Missed because of Religious Observances” (for any missed examinations that cannot be made up earlier). However, the Jewish holiday of Passover is occurring from Tuesday, April 19 and will continue for seven days until Monday, April 25. [Note: In the Jewish calendar, a holiday begins on the sunset of the previous day, so observing Jews will celebrate on the sunset of Monday, April 18.] For the first time in fourteen years, this conflict is occurring. The Dean’s office has tried to make students aware of the conflict since last October to help try to make the best of this issue, but this does not seem to be enough for a number of Jewish students.

This means that not only will a number of students not be able to go home and celebrate this important holiday with their families, some students, such as Eric Gablehauser*, are currently registered for “AWFUL” classes so that his exams do not take place during Passover. Leonard  Hofstadter says, “It is as if GW Law School does not want Orthodox Jews to enroll at the school.” To Hofstadter, he wishes he “would have known about these problems before [choosing] GW[, because he] would have gone to a different law school.”

One student, Penny, explains that “Passover falls over an eight-day period, bookended by two days on [each] end, which are holidays that [are] observe[d] by refraining from certain activities.” This includes things like writing, using a computer, and more. Penny goes on to say that “the remaining four days are also a holiday, though the restrictions are less stringent, so I can technically take part in activities like writing and using my computer.”

The dates of Passover and the days that are absolute holidays pose a number of problems. The most obvious is that students with exams that fall on the same day they are not supposed to engage in certain activities means that they cannot take their exams that day. If students are like Sheldon Cooper and Penny, who have exams the day after the absolute holiday days, they cannot study immediately prior to the exam, they cannot contact any friends or study groups, nor can they benefit from two whole days of studying. While exams that fall on the holidays are rescheduled, ones that immediately follow are not.

Penny states that although she knew that attending a non-denominational school would pose issues between academia and her religion, she thought that GW would be “more in-tune with the needs of a diverse student body; Passover is probably one of the least obscure Jewish holidays.” Penny did not, however, “expect the administration to cater to every religious groups’ needs and concerns in making an exam schedule,” but she thinks that “having finals fall squarely at the same time as Passover could have been avoided.”

Rajesh Koothrappali is in disbelief over the scheduling conflict between exams and Passover. While professors, student groups, and organizations have been accommodating to scheduling concerns, Koothrappali does not understand why a “tremendous amount of hours have been wasted by numerous students attempting to figure out how not to be disadvantaged by the scheduling difficulties.” Koothrappali was told that the exam period must fall on those days because of a lack of funding in comparison to other schools to have exam proctors available at an alternate time. This to Koothrappali is an excuse that he cannot believe. Additionally, to Koothrappali, the fact that students cannot discuss the conflict between exams and Passover with professors (due to blind grading practices), in GW’s “quest for fairness” the school is stifling the possibility for an amicable solution to be reached.

I spoke to Dean DeVigne, Dean of Student Affairs, about the conflict and she explained a little bit as to why this conflict is occurring.

Students like Sheldon Cooper want to know why the school cannot shift the school year a week or two later, (“like EVERY OTHER law school”). Dean DeVigne explains that the graduation date—May 15, 2011—is set by the University as a whole. It is at this time when the undergraduate and graduate schools host end of the year events. University staff work overtime, thousands of people come to town to celebrate, and the law school wants to assure that students do not miss out on the festivities on campus. This includes any guest speakers — first lady Michelle Obama spoke at GW’s Commencement last year. Dean DeVigne explains that in the past, the law school used to have a commencement date later than the university as a whole, but the general school community felt that students were missing out on the festivities; moreover, the law school had to handle all of their end-of-the-year events themselves.

The law school does their best to ensure that on graduation date, students walking across the stage are handed their actual diploma, not a placeholder. One issue with this is that the Dean’s Office had a difficult time tracking every student down to send them their diploma. So for students to get their real diploma on stage, professors need to get their grades in by Friday, May 6 so that the records office will have enough time to see what students will be graduating, what their GPA will be, and what academic awards will be given out. Professors will have to grade 3L make-up exams taken on May 2 by that Friday. While some may think it fine to receive a placeholder at graduation (Penny received a nice folder at graduation and her diploma in the mail two weeks later), the school believes that students will be upset that they do not get their diplomas or grades because of religious holidays.

However, students like Koothrappali wonder why the school does not try to make an exception for 1L exams, as they do not need to be graded by graduation.

Dean DeVigne explained that the school is subject to the rules set by the American Bar Association (“ABA”) in order to be an accredited law school. For every credit hour, a class must meet for 700 minutes. [I know a lot of you are not good at math, hence the law school route, but your three credit class is worth 2100 minutes!] If this is spaced out over our thirteen week semester—including spring break—coupled with the length of the exam period and the need to abide by the University’s graduation date, we now know why law school started on January 3rd (much to the dismay of students and professors alike).

Not only are the Deans subject to the rules of the ABA, they also have their hands tied due to academic freedom. Professors reserve the right to grade things how they want to grade them (how many points come from class participation, the in class exam, research paper, etc.). Additionally, the Dean’s office cannot tell students that they are able to take the exam any earlier than it is scheduled. At the same time, there is a concern with students taking exams at a later date, as they may get an advantage or the professor might figure out which exam belongs to that student. So the Dean’s office is working tirelessly to try and figure out what professors will do: Write an entirely new exam or have students who take the exam later not get a letter grade. In the end though, Dean DeVigne wanted to make it very clear that students who cannot get credit for their class will not be penalized for taking more than the limit of seventeen ungraded credits, and 1Ls and 2Ls will be able to flag their transcript to show that the class at issue involved special circumstances to help ensure that this issue does not affect the rest of their law school experience nor any job opportunities.

It seems though that in the end, according to Howard Wolowitz, Cooper, and Hofstadter, students would have liked it if the administration—once they realized that this was a problem—had spoken with the religious Jewish students before coming up with the policy. To Wolowitz, “the GW administration and Dean’s Office could do a better job of communicating and working with students to address their concerns.”

*Students in this article were named after characters in the hit TV show, The Big Bang Theory