Every spring and fall, public spaces on campus fill with ministers, preachers and laypeople announcing their faith, or the lack thereof. Students exercise their freedoms by hanging banners from Coffman Union. Campus ministries are active and often work together. Most students, most of the time, can take holy days off without sanction. This community usually lives up to the promises of the state and federal bills of rights.
Religion here is free from both repression and coercion.
The University is typical of public institutions in this regard, so the University offers a good test case for the Religious Freedom Amendment passed by a House committee last week. Proponents of the measure say that in the last 30 years courts have gone too far in separating church and state. Activist judges, they charge, have all but banned religion from public life. The only way to override the Supreme Court is to amend the Constitution, and that's what some religious conservatives now seek to do. The Government shall not require any person to join in prayer or other religious activity, initiate or designate school prayers, discriminate against religion, or deny equal access to a benefit on account of religion.