Poison Ivy?

Remember when smokin' in the boys' room was scandalous? At Yale, it's not smoke but steam that is scandalizing a group of Orthodox Jews who are fighting the school's libertine dormitory policies. Around the country, the existence of loose rules makes virtuous living more difficult for on-campus believers-but does that compromise the gospel? | Roy Maynard

At first glance, these two young Yalies, Paul Clewell and Elisha Dov Hack, aren't very dissimilar; they're both young men from fairly average middle-class backgrounds (their grades got them into Yale, not their families' pull). They arrived on campus with firm beliefs and a knowledge that their beliefs would be tested at Yale.

The difference is in how they've reacted.

Mr. Hack, 20, is one of the "Yale 5," a group of Orthodox Jewish students now suing Yale to let them live off campus (Yale rules say almost all freshmen must live on campus). The problem, they say, is the anything-goes atmosphere in the Yale dorms; most residential buildings are co-ed, and bizarrely, most bathrooms and (unofficially) many bedrooms are, too.