“Disgusted” is how Lauren Hauptman felt when she learned that the painting class she wanted to take was beginning on Rosh Hashanah.
The class, offered through the continuing education program at the City College of San Francisco, begins Saturday, Sept. 7.
Hauptman, who has been taking courses through City College’s continuing education program for a few years, notified the school back in May when she first learned of the problem.
“I assumed they didn’t bother to check a calendar,” she said. “I was annoyed and assumed it was a mistake.”
But when she alerted officials at the school, their response did not please her.
“The decision to start our Saturday workshops on Sept. 7 was not taken lightly,” wrote Kirk Stoller, program developer in the office of continuing education at City College. “It was made because the fall semester has so few Saturdays when the school is officially open due to non-secular holidays.”
Stoller offered to prorate the fee for the class, as well as ensure that information from the session is provided to anyone who requests it, but that reply didn’t satisfy Hauptman.
“I stewed about it a little bit,” she said. “I couldn’t believe they would actually say that; they clearly don’t get it. I wrote back explaining that and did not hear from them again.”
When Jackie Berman, education specialist of the Jewish Community Relations Council, learned of the problem from a reporter, she said it was not something the JCRC would get involved with.
“There are some borderline cases where something is already scheduled and it’s not crucial to the student’s success or failure and we just aren’t going to make an issue of it,” she said. “Our criteria is a student being penalized, like if there’s an exam a teacher won’t give a makeup for, but that’s not the situation here.”
Hauptman said in the past, classes have been held on the High Holy Days, and “while I was annoyed by it at the time, I let it go, because I get tired of fighting all the time. I find people in San Francisco are particularly ignorant and insensitive about Jewish issues. But this was not only a class, but it was starting on that day. I could not let that go.”
Hauptman then wrote to Chancellor Philip R. Day Jr. and gave a copy to City College’s entire board of trustees. She also sent one to the Bulletin.
That’s when things began happening. Milton Marks III, who sits on the Jewish Community Relations Council board and is also a City College trustee, first learned about Hauptman’s complaint from a Bulletin reporter, as he had not yet received her letter. He called Hauptman and then took the letter to the chancellor himself.
Hauptman then received a phone call from Dean Judy Teng, but that complicated matters further when Teng’s story did not match Stoller’s. Teng said that administrators simply didn’t have a calendar with the Jewish holidays on it, while Stoller said they did, but they decided to begin classes on that day anyhow.
A few weeks have passed, and the class is still beginning on Sept. 7. Hauptman will not be there.
A window now opens on the college’s Web site, to anyone who clicks on the course’s start date, apologizing that it’s Rosh Hashanah and that any student who must miss the first class will be compensated.
Hauptman has accepted the college’s offer to compensate her for the missed class. But with Marks’ involvement, she hopes City College will ensure this won’t happen again.
“It’s not perfect, but they did the best they could do,” she said. “I’m guessing it won’t happen again.”
Marks complimented Hauptman for her persistence, saying, “We need people to point things like this out.”
The college should have a policy not to start classes on those days, rather than “a loose set of guidelines that faculty can interpret how they want,” he said. “It should be pretty clear. I will try to see about getting that process started.”