Why Did Dartmouth Reschedule Rosh Hashanah Classes For Shabbat?

Last year, when Jewish students at Dartmouth looked ahead to the fall’s academic calendar, they noticed something was awry: the school year was scheduled to begin on Rosh Hashanah. They quickly alerted the administration, and the oversight was corrected, with class postponed until Sept. 16. But then what should have been a story about the college’s constructive response to student concerns took an odd turn. Dartmouth’s administration decided to make up the cancelled Rosh Hashanah classes–by scheduling new ones on Shabbat.

Needless to say, this did not sit well with some Jews on campus, both Sabbath-observant and not. What purpose did it serve, they asked, to reschedule from one holy day to another? Any why were students being required to make up class due to a Jewish holiday, when it would just have been cancelled for any other?

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