May 12, 2003
Tech biology professor changes requirements
___WASHINGTON (RNS)--The Justice Department has ended its investigation of a complaint against a Texas Tech University biology professor after he stopped requiring that students believe in evolution to receive a letter of recommendation.
___The department dropped its probe after professor Michael Dini eliminated the evolution belief requirement in his recommendation policy. He replaced it with a requirement that students have the ability to explain the theory of evolution.
___Micah Spradling, a Texas Tech student, filed the complaint, accusing Dini of refusing to write letters of recommendation based on religious beliefs of his students. Spradling said as a creationist he couldn't state a belief in human evolution to receive a recommendation.
___The Liberty Legal Institute, a religious freedom group, joined in filing the complaint, calling Dini's policy "open religious bigotry."
___Dini's previous policy on his website told students desiring a recommendation to be able to answer a question about their views on the origin of the human species.
___"If you cannot truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation for admittance to further education in the biomedical sciences," he previously wrote.
___Now his website reads: "How do you account for the scientific origin of the human species? If you will not give a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation."
___Dini later adds that the requirement "should not be misconstrued as discriminatory against anyone's personal beliefs."
___In the fall, Spradling withdrew from Texas Tech and transferred to Lubbock Christian University. He re-enrolled at the first school in the spring semester after getting a recommendation letter at the other school.
___"A biology student may need to understand the theory of evolution and be able to explain it," said Ralph Boyd Jr., the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for civil rights, in a statement. "But a state-run university has no business telling students what they should or should not believe in."
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