For decades, students at an elite New York City public high school have faced an unusual requirement: To graduate with full honors, they must complete a one-semester swim class or pass a swim test.
Some of the girls who take the course have traditionally opted for an all-girls section. Many of them cite religious guidelines that dictate modesty in dress; others simply feel uncomfortable wearing a swimsuit around boys.
But after administrators at the school, Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, eliminated the all-girls classes in favor of coed ones, the swimming requirement became the focus of a debate about how to balance religious accommodations with social integration.
The school had stopped offering the all-girls classes last spring. But some Muslim students said they were unaware of the shift until a recent report in the student newspaper. Administrators said it had become unfeasible to fit the classes into schedules; the classes might have also run afoul of the Education Department’s gender inclusion guidelines.
The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations criticized the shift as “disheartening and unacceptable.” New York City is home to more than half a million Muslims, and advocates for religious freedom said the dispute reflected broader challenges some Muslim youth face.
“At the end of the day, Stuyvesant has the responsibility to accommodate its students,” said Sophia Dasser, 17, a junior at the school who is Muslim and who wrote the article about the change for the student newspaper. “There’s this idea that Muslim girls can find another way. But no, some can’t. And that needs to be addressed.”
Several Muslim students said they felt their academic goals had been pitted against their religion. “It shouldn’t matter whether I’m Muslim, Jewish, Christian, if I personally do not feel comfortable,” Ms. Dasser said.
After the outcry, which was also reported by the New York Post, Education Department officials said this week that students who need accommodations would soon be able to receive full honors through classes on other life skills.
Just a handful of high schools statewide require swim tests. The mandates were once prevalent, particularly at the nation’s colleges and universities: Decades ago, more than one in three treated swimming as an essential life skill that students had to demonstrate to graduate.
But many schools have since eliminated the requirements. Some argue they penalize students from low-income backgrounds, who are less likely to have learned how to swim as children.
In New York City, where more than 58 people have drowned at public pools and beaches since 2008, many see a need for more robust swim education. And at Stuyvesant, with an Olympic-size pool on campus, many say the course is integral to the student experience.
Students must complete the swim requirement to receive what’s known as a “Stuyvesant diploma,” a seal on their regular diploma representing the completion of an extensive set of credits beyond what most schools require. Most students get the seal, and some feel pressured to, though it rarely carries weight in college admissions.
City schools must make “reasonable accommodations for students to be able to exercise their religious rights,” while balancing several factors, according to Education Department rules.
Nathaniel Styer, a department spokesman, said that Stuyvesant would continue “to explore options” with families.
The tensions at Stuyvesant mirrored contentious debates that have erupted over the importance and constitutionality of single-gender hours at pools.
When New York canceled women-only swim hours at a public pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that had been popular among Orthodox Jewish residents, in 2016, the move set off a heated national debate. Critics argued the hours were a violation of the separation of church and state, but limited separate periods were later restored.
Also in 2016, New York became the first large city to close schools in observance of two Muslim holy days, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.
But Ahmed Mohamed, the legal director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the change at Stuyvesant was a high-profile example of the continued challenges observant Muslim youth face, in K-12 schools and beyond.
“We’re seeing a trend where there are Muslim students all over this city who are having a real difficulty with getting accommodations at their schools,” he said.
At Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens, Muslim teenagers had hoped to receive permission to use a vacant meditation room for their daily prayers.
But city schools “may not set aside rooms or designate special areas” for prayer to “avoid the appearance of support for a particular religion,” Education Department regulations say.
So Muslim students at Hillcrest have prayed in a 4-foot-wide closet filled with classroom materials.
“We’ve been so disheartened,” said Ariyya Mohsin, 16, a Hillcrest sophomore who is Muslim, adding that she has sometimes struggled to feel like “a valued member of the community.”
Tamiyyah Shafiq, 14, a Stuyvesant sophomore who received permission to drop the swim class, said she hoped student concerns wouldn’t be trivialized.
“People think, ‘Oh, it’s an elite school. That means these privileged girls can just take private swim classes,’” she said. “But for many of us, that’s just not true.”
