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He asked Professor Sarah Trimble during the first week to waive the 15% participation mark because he wasn’t comfortable about contributing in class, the decision says. When she denied his request, he chose not to attend any classes.

The decision says Ms. Trimble would give the marks back in class and Mr. Kim did not know that he was failing until it was too late to drop the course.

The final straw for Mr. Kim was in January 2013 when he went to Ms. Trimble’s office to request that she raise his marks, the decision says.

“He felt that [Ms. Trimble] paid more attention to another student in the hallway …[who] was female and not visibly Asian. The applicant is male and Asian,” Ms. Truemner writes, citing this example as the reason why Mr. Kim thought his professor discriminated against his gender and race. “I do not agree.”

This case reignites a debate about what criteria a university should consider when trying to accommodate a student’s beliefs.

James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, said this case has nothing to do with human rights — but rather personal preference.

“There’s a lot of confusion out there that anybody’s personal preferences trumps other people’s rights,” he says. “I don’t have a right to walk into a classroom and say I want all the Jews out because they make me uncomfortable or I want to segregate a class so I don’t have to be with women. You just can’t do those things.”

Most recently, a York University student was denied a request to be separated from his female classmate for religious reasons. The student complained to the university and officials told sociology professor J. Paul Grayson that he had to accommodate the request.

“It represents a great leap backwards,” said Mr. Grayson. “When I was a student, you couldn’t have gotten away with that — it wouldn’t even have been considered.”

National Post, with files from Tristin Hopper