Schools added meeting-attendance clauses specifically to bar observant Muslim students

Evidence

But this time she was stunned to find that a new clause had been added to the Declaration of Consent form required to run. “I understand and acknowledge the responsibilities and the commitments needed to hold a position on the Student Organization of Fort Hamilton High School,” it read. “If elected, I agree to attend all Student Organization sponsored events.” All events? Yasmin felt as if she had just been punched in the stomach. The new contract was aimed squarely at her. Moreover, the new form disqualified all people like her from ever running for office. Damn! she thought. She’d believed that she had outsmarted them, and now they’d trumped her by cutting her off in the race before she even left the starting line. Round one in her new battle plan had gone to the school. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 385

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ essay’s theme of institutions subtly encoding accommodations in ways that function as exclusion — dress codes vs. attendance clauses as neutral-seeming rules with targeted effects.
• QUESTION: Was this new attendance clause actually aimed at Yasmin, or a generic rule tightening? The author presents it as targeted; the ambiguity about institutional intent versus effect is worth chasing.