<strong><a href=”mailto:michelle-boryca@uiowa.edu”>By Michelle Boryca</a><strong>
Gus Anderson will not eat his favorite meal today: meat cake — three-layers of meat loaf smothered with barbecue sauce or ketchup and frosted with mashed potatoes.
Instead, the UI junior will go to class hungry.
Anderson and other Jewish students will attend classes on an empty stomach for the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur. Fasting started at sundown Sunday and will end at sundown tonight.
Though Anderson can be excused from his classes, he said, he’ll attend, because he would rather save his absences.
“I’m only allowed three absences, and I’d rather save that for a Friday,” Anderson said with a grin.
But a common misconception among students is that missing class for religious holidays will count against their grade.
The UI’s policy regarding religious diversity and spiritual values on campus allows students celebrating a religious holiday to make accommodations in order to prevent penalty on work assignments, test schedules, and attendance expectations, according to UI’s Student Services website.
A student’s attendance record cannot be harmed for missing class for a religious holy day.
UI religious-studies Professor Jay Holstein, who is also a rabbi, has never canceled class because it conflicted with a Jewish holiday. But he said he understands the importance of religious observance for many students.
“I make sure that [the students] are not penalized academically for missing a class,” he said.
Professors and teaching assistants are required to hold classes as scheduled despite the religious holiday, according to the UI Operations Manual.
“[Faculty have] the responsibility to meet classes as scheduled and, when circumstances prevent this, to arrange equivalent alternate instruction,” the manual states.
Like Anderson, UI junior Lisa Greenfield will attend classes during Yom Kippur, but she said she knows it’s going to be tough.
“I could get excused from class,” she said. “I guess I’m too lazy.”
Making up class work, getting notes, and submitting assignments is a lot of work, she said. Instead, Greenfield planned the holiday’s services around her class schedule.
But she said she misses her high-school days in Highland Park, Ill., when she didn’t have to go to school hungry.
“You could stay in your bed all day,” Greenfield said.
