Why should it be necessary for them to stipulate it? If the group wants a non-Christian leader, let it elect one.

There is also nothing that stops the group from organizing as a private organization, and then they can discriminate membership to their heart's content.

The issue must be understood as rules governing a student organization, not a "Christian club".

That shouldn't be necessary. That policy is self-centric.

It's not a question of necessity, but it's a question of establishing identity. The possibility exists (especially for smaller groups) that with open membership policies that it's possible for things such as a hostile takeover of a group. The example from the link I provided seems apt.

Let's say that in a deeply religious region of the country that there is a small secular organization consisting of about 5 members. It would not take much for a militant religious group to get 6 students to show up to that group, elect themselves into power, raid whatever funds it has, and then dismantle the group.

Does a group have sufficient freedom to declare their purposes and to erect standards of leadership consistent with those purposes? That's the whole point of establishing formal structures like a constitution, by-laws, and everything. (Some organizations establish "guiding principles" which they use to attempt to restrain the sorts of behaviors that the leadership should take, but those are not binding.)

In "real life" organizations implement such controls either by restricting membership (which restricts voter access) or by implementing standards of leadership. It seems very odd to create a situation in which an organization can do neither. It's a very "ivory tower" approach to the situation.

Many groups have already done this.

The point remains, does a student organization have the right to a form of self-determination by establishing rules of leadership to define the direction which the organization will take?

It wouldn't be common - but without such a rule, some clubs would be conquered for the purpose of trolling.

Consider a christian club with 30 members. 31 atheists join the club, elect their own leader, and then they start cancelling events, or otherwise distort the message and purpose of the organization. (note that I actually think the opposite would be far more likely, that a christian group would seek to conquer an atheist group and start reciting prayers at the atheist meetings - but the point is the same in either case)

Without limits on 1. who can join, 2. who can lead, or 3. what the leaders can do, there is no way for a small group to be able to protect the intended mission of their founded organization from a larger group. #3 would be best as far as inclusiveness, but can actually be quite difficult - flexibility is highly preferred. So they look to #2 as an alternative.

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edit: cross post with aaron - pretty much, what he said

That objection is very thin, considering that:

a) bylaws regarding the candidate's affiliation would be subject to the exact same principle
b) a leader of a student organization is not an elected dictator, he answers to its bylaws
c) you are describing harassment, which I'm sure is not allowed by most universities to occur in their student organizations

a) i'm not sure which principle you are referring to here. if you just mean that somebody could merely lie about their affiliation or whatever, then yes, that is obviously still a problem with any sort of litmus test for leadership rule.
b) how is 'cancelling an event' or 'reading a prayer at a meeting' akin to being a dictator and not something well within the bounds of an elected club president/secretary/treasurer etc. according to a typical set of bylaws?
c) also, where does the harrassment fit in? joining a club? voting? performing leadership duties according to the preferences of most of a club's members?

That is too many comments and too many question for a very simple point, I'll just assume most of your objections are completely inerrant. Thus in our thought experimment, there is now absolutely no way for student organizations to protect themselves from hostile democratic takeovers.

In this scenario, having a set of bylaws that barred their leader from being X would not offer any protection either, since the bylaws would be subject to the exact same trolling.

Thus you discriminate for no reason. I suggest moving on to the next reason why leaders should not be X.

perhaps for an existing group that has already been infiltrated. but not for a new group where the bylaws would be in place from the point of formation before even opening to a broader membership beyond its small number of core creators.

Well, democracy can be cured by outlawing it yes. This is not commonly regarded as a good thing.

I don't mean to sound smug, but I think the proposed dilemma is stretched very thin both in thought experiment and in real world musings. Especially when we know that the proposed mechanisms to stop it, active discrimination, is a very actual and very real problem in many venues of life.

It's not clear what you mean by "answers to its bylaws" especially as it pertains to student organizations. See for example the following template:

http://activities.richmond.edu/organ...le-bylaws.html

What do you see in this document that the student leader would need to "answer to" as it pertains to a Christian leader simply cancelling secular events and spending the funds to just buy pizzas?

c) is clearly false. It's not automatically harassment for militant Christians to join a secular group. Harassment is a particular way of joining the group that is somehow confrontational. You can't keep them from joining as long as their participation is civil. (That would be discrimination.)

And there is such a thing as a civil hostile takeover.

Well, the "proposed mechanisms" that the students are proposing are the "actual mechanisms" of real organizational structures. It's not as if the student groups are doing things that go beyond real world applications. In fact, they are restrained from going as far as most real world organizational structures are able to go.

Simply put, your concept of discrimination is "uncommonly silly":

I'm aware of similar instances. For example, an unmarried female religious leader got pregnant and was removed from leadership (but not from the group).

This ties in with the last paragraph of the link I presented above:

Your selected quote is flawed, and I would actually think that someone who is so happy to point out errors in logic would immediately have spotted that "saying that leaders of a group devoted to believing X should be expected to believe X" is not the same as "requiring that leaders of a group devoted to believing X should believe X".

Nobody in this thread has suggested it should not be allowed to mean or say that a religious group should have religious leaders, student organization or not.

Well, as established it is not my concept of discrimination. Feel free to apologize.

You can try to take that bit of language in isolation and interpret "should be expected" as being more suggestive than declarative, but the content of the rest of the blog post I linked to clearly indicates that the suggestive element is that student organizations should have the authority to be declarative in their documents about the characteristics of their leaders.

No apology is offered at this time. I maintain that your concept is "uncommonly silly" as I've previously stated.

Given that you entered the thread arguing against hypothetical positions that haven't been presented, is any surprise you would misinterpret a fairly explicit commentary that opposes the position you've taken and try to argue as if it really matches yours? The answer is no.

but it is not discriminatory to exclude them from eligibility for specific positions in the group based on their religious views?

I'm not saying it's not discriminatory, but I don't think that it falls at the level of discrimination that should be banned. It depends on whether you're taking "discrimination" and "discriminatory" to reach some sort of legal standard, or if you're using it in a bland way as a word to denote that there exist some type of qualification which may prevent some people from participating in certain ways (e.g., gender differentiated restrooms are discriminatory).

In that statement, I'm saying that discrimination at that level (general membership) is unacceptable. If you would like see the word "unacceptable" or "meet the legal definition of" inserted in the parenthetical above, I would not object to such a change.

Okay, so even on the least demanding interpretation of the word, what is your argument that banning nonreligious members from general group membership is unacceptable but banning nonreligious members from other positions in the group is acceptable.

Your argument may or may not be sensitive to the following types of question: Is it just the leader? What about banning the nonreligious from treasurer? Meeting minutes taker? Baker for the bake sale?

A leader within an organization holds a symbolic meaning as a person who reflects the underlying values and/or beliefs of an organization. It undermines the integrity of the organization if the leader does not reflect those values (either in theory -- meaning beliefs -- or in practice -- meaning behaviors).

As to the level of leadership to which this position stretches, I would argue it depends too much on the structure, purpose, and practices of the organization to make too specific of a commentary. It should at least extend to those who are in a position to make decisions that impact the overall functioning of the organization from an executive level.

Participation at levels below such positions of authority may be allowed because those positions would not impact the integrity of the organization in the particular context. In a system where open participation is structurally required (such as student organizations in a university setting), there is no symbolic content carried by mere group membership because there is not specific standard for such participation that can carry such a meaning.

In a more general situation, where group membership itself has such requirements, then group membership would carry more symbolic meaning. It means something to be a card-carrying LDS member because to be a card-carrying LDS member requires a commitment to certain things (creeds, behaviors, etc). Membership with a student-run Christian organization in a campus setting with unrestricted membership means nothing because membership with a student-run Christian organization requires no specific commitment other than showing up to meetings.

I don't see much value in "your position is silly". As for the quote, it was you who bolded the selected text initially, not me.

Besides, I disagree. The entire quote is equally bad since it is patently obvious that being opposed banning leaders based on religious affiliation is not the same as being opposed to student organizations selecting leaders based in part on religious affiliation.

For what it is worth; In my country student organizations can not discriminate like this, and this is completely unproblematic. Contrary to the proposed problem in this thread of increased intergroup hostility, my experience is that it fosters increased intergroup cooperation.

In theory, bolding selections is for emphasis, and you were expected to read the entire quote and not just the bolded parts. Maybe assuming you would do that was asking too much of you. The full context of the quote is clearly against your position.

Sure. But I'm not going to quote the entire article for you when I've referred to it. I don't necessarily anticipate that you would read the entire post, but if you want to portray yourself as being consistent with the quote when the quote was taken from a specific source, it's meaningful for me to criticize that you haven't done so when the specific source in its entirety points against your position. Besides, the quoted portion was sufficient to demonstrate that that the post is contrary to your view.

I grant that you can interpret some of the ambiguity in the quote in isolation to support your side, but, as I've pointed out to you, that the ambiguity doesn't grant you the ability to declare that the words should be interpreted in a way that is favorable to you.

In the US, student oraganizations have historically discriminated like this and it has been unproblematic. And intergroup activities and cooperation are common. However, we have an extra protection in the event of intergroup hostility that apparently you don't.

As stated already, I disagree with your interpretation. I think it is fairly clear that the argument in the text collapses. A claim that I somehow never read the rest is, for the record, also a non-sequitur. Once again, for someone usually so happy to point out logical errors, this is bad form.

Your posts also contain too many words and effort given that what you are basically doing is defending "that's silly". That disagreement with a leader's belief should be resolved in democratic process rather than disallowing him / her to run in the first place should somehow be "silly" is just puzzling.

If that is all there is to it to this debate for you, then the OP isn't really very upfront.

Try as you might, but doomed to fail. Just as with your initial post that challenged some position that nobody put forth, and your extra post defending yourself that makes no sense if that were truly the case, your initial post displays your ignorance.

The only way that you would argue that

would be if you didn't read the rest of the quote nor the rest of the post. For if you had, that particular interpretation would immediately be understood as wrong. And I've explained how it's wrong.

But of course, you're trying to have it both ways. You want to interpret the quote in that particular erroneous manner, and you also want to argue that the entire argument of the post falls apart. The only way I can see it falling apart in some trivial manner is if you misinterpret statements as you've done above.

I'm mostly using "uncommonly silly" as a quote from the article. The post argues against the position you're holding and describes your position in that way. The fact that you're puzzled by that is of no concern of mine. You have not ever addressed the content of the argument other than to dismiss it offhandedly and give the "in my country it's like this" argument.

So I think there are two "easy" and one "hard" position possible for people to take. There is the "easy" nondiscrimination position which claims that no role at a university should have explicit restrictions based on religion or other protected classes. Then there is the "easy" libertarian position which claims that groups should have the freedom to make any role can be so restricted, such as membership in the group or leader of the group or any other. I mean easy in the sense that one makes one's arguments but they aren't sensitive to the specifics of any group. You, however, are going for the tricky one. You are claiming that it is unacceptable to restrict general membership, but that it is acceptable to restrict elected leaders, and it might or might not be acceptable to restrict other roles in between based on some characteristics you have not laid out.

What I am not seeing from you is the kind of argument that allows such sensitivity, that allows for you to call group membership restrictions unacceptable, leadership restrictions acceptable and something hazy in the middle depending on structure. The main thing you have written in support is this:
I don't disagree, and for the most part think this is basically exactly what happens: members of a group, who will tend to represent the values of the group, will elect people that represent the values of the members as leaders. What I don't see is the argument as to why we should not allow restrictions of the members, but can allow the restrictions of the leaders. You have claimed they are somewhat more symbolically important than members. Okay. So complete the argument: how to get from this claim to the claim about which bans are and are not acceptable?

I don't think this follows. You might be able to say "it doesn't necessarily give symbolic content" because a member does not necessarily have to support the values and beliefs of the group. But generally they will.

Generally, people who join chess clubs like chess and membership in the chess club symbolizes ones enjoyment of chess. Generally those chess members will elect a leader who likewise enjoys chess and further symbolizes enjoyment of chess. While it may happen that there is a "hostile takeover" of the chess club by go players convinced of the vast superiority of their chosen strategic turn based board game aiming to abolish the lesser chess, this in it self doesn't seem justification to either ban non chess lovers as members OR as leaders. In fact I simply don't see the argument that allows the one but not the other.

BTW, some useful thought experiments might be these: What about a group that runs a "true" democracy: no elected representatives, every decision made by full membership vote. Could we then restrict membership to only those of a specific religion? What about a group that did a revolving leadership. Each meeting the leader of the meeting revolved between different members of the group making each leader for a day, in turn? What about a group with an oligarchial leadership: it elects a "politburo" that then have equal weighting in decision making, can we restrict the entire politburo? And so on.

In an idealized situation, I would give the groups the ability to define their membership qualifications to as high or low a level of specificity as the group desires. Then such questions become internal issues for which larger structures (say, university bureaucracy) would not speak directly to.

One of the primary issues is that group structures are not equivalent across multiple groups. The specific role that the "vice-president" of a club plays will be different from club to club. Therefore, it cannot be defined that "vice-president" *must* be one type of position and not another.

I don't think such an argument is necessary. That is, my analysis exists within the confines of the system that already exists. The system that already exists DEMANDS open membership. Fine. Such a system does not necessarily lose the group integrity as described previously. But if the system demands open membership, that group integrity must arise from somewhere. And that comes in the definition of leadership expectations and qualifications.

As I mentioned before, a more libertarian approach is to let groups self-define without constraints imposed upon them by the university system.

Generally speaking, I agree. But that's not the point. The point is that groups should be given the freedom to define their leadership structures and qualifications based on the values and purpose of the group.

I'm not making (nor have I ever made) a general theoretical argument supporting that universities should require student organizations to have open membership policies. As mentioned above, I think student groups should be able to establish membership criteria for any level of participation as a default.

Edit: To clarify a bit -- My argument is that since the ability to restrict membership has been taken away (as well as other requirements that have been placed on student organizations), it seems reasonable to allow student organizations to define their leadership structure in a way that requires their leaders to exhibit characteristics in line with the group's purpose and beliefs. Taking this away denies the group to actively do things to preserve the integrity of their group.