Wiccan days included on Tenn. university calendar

Wiccan and pagan students at Vanderbilt University might get to take an excused day off from class to dance around the maypole.

Vanderbilt's Office of Religious Life recently sent professors a calendar of 2011-12 "religious holy days and observances" and a related policy on student absences. The faith listed next to four of the days on the calendar is "Wicca/Pagan."

Wicca, whose believers are called Wiccans or witches, is just one form of paganism, an umbrella term for beliefs in multiple gods and goddesses. Some religious believers consider paganism to be outside the mainstream because it bucks the monotheistic tradition of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

The Vanderbilt policy says students must be excused from classes and other academic activities on days when their religious traditions put restrictions on labor or forbid it outright, like Eid al Fitr for Muslims and Yom Kippur for Jews. It says professors, department chairs or deans can decide if absences will be excused for religious days that are not "work-restricted," including the Wiccan and pagan days.

"This is a mechanism to let faculty be aware of these holidays, that there may be students approaching them, for example, to reschedule an exam, to make up a day of coursework or something like that because they are choosing to observe their religion on that day," Vanderbilt spokeswoman Princine Lewis said Tuesday. "And that's an agreement that would have to be worked out with the faculty member."

Asked how professors would be able to know if students really planned to observe those holy days, Lewis said, "It's on the honor system."

Lewis said the Wiccan and pagan days are on the Vanderbilt calendar because it follows the BBC Interfaith Calendar. She said there was "no way of knowing" the Wiccan and pagan population on the campus of more than 12,000 students and 22,000 employees.

An email sent to an address listed on a Facebook page for the Vanderbilt Pagan Association bounced back to a reporter.

The Wiccan and pagan holidays listed by Vanderbilt include Samhain-Beltane on Nov. 1 and Beltane-Samhain on May 1. Those spellings and dates match the ones on interfaithcalendar.org, on which Vanderbilt's calendar is partially based. The BBC Interfaith Calendar lists Oct. 31 as the pagan holy day of Samhain, which marks the Feast of the Dead, and May 1 as Beltane.

"Pagans celebrate Beltane with maypole dances, symbolizing the mystery of the Sacred Marriage of Goddess and God," the BBC calendar says.

The only religious days that are paid holidays for Vanderbilt employees are Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Lewis said university employees get two personal days a year along with vacation time.