by Olivia Sanchez, The Hechinger Report
May 15, 2026

OGDEN, Utah — The syllabus in 18-year-old Madelynn Wells’ introductory film studies class assigned “Jaws” first, and then the Spanish dark comedy “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.” She said she watched those, and did the written assignments with no problem. 

Around the third week of the term, the assignment was a film called “Pariah.” She hadn’t heard of it, so she looked it up and found that it was a coming-of-age film about a young woman who turned away from her conservative family to live as a lesbian.

Wells, a freshman at Weber State University who said she’s a devout Catholic and a political conservative, felt uneasy. She didn’t want to watch the film, and the idea of writing a paper on it made her even more uncomfortable. 

“I feel like whenever you put something in writing it just feels more serious,” Wells said. 

She decided to drop the class. 

In Utah, with a large and devout religious population, Wells is not alone in trying to uphold her religious beliefs while getting a college education. 

A new state law offers these students a unique protection: If something in a class conflicts with their strongly held religious or personal beliefs, students can ask their professor for an alternative assignment or exam. And as long as their request doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the course, the professor is now required by law to allow the student to opt out. 

The law has some guardrails that protect against accommodation requests that are universally considered absurd. For example, a student won’t be able to claim a moral objection to math in a college algebra course. And the law requires faculty to make these accommodations only in courses that are part of a college’s general education requirement or are required for the student’s major.

Despite those protections, the law is polarizing. Proponents say that students shouldn’t be required to do assignments or take exams on topics that compromise their morals unless it’s absolutely necessary to advance in their field of study. Opponents argue that engaging with beliefs they don’t hold helps students understand their own views better. 

This Utah law is the first of its kind targeting higher education, but it’s an extension of concerns being expressed at the K-12 level. There have been efforts to emphasize conservative and religious values in public schools, and limit what can be taught about subjects including racial history, gender and sexuality. The Utah law is also reminiscent of a case the Supreme Court took up last year, in which the justices sided with parents of public school students who wanted to take their children out of class during lessons that violate their religious beliefs — such as using books about LGBTQ+ identities. President Donald Trump has said that colleges are “corrupting our youth and society with woke, socialist, and anti-American ideology.” 

And over the past few years, there have been dozens of state-level bills — including one in Utah — banning initiatives or programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. Lawmakers in other states have gone after what’s taught in the classroom and how certain issues, like race and gender identity, are discussed. The legislative approach here is different. Instead of dictating what can or cannot be taught, the new Utah law shifts the power to students who now have the agency to decide when curriculum crosses a line for them. 

Amy Reid, who directs the Freedom to Learn initiative at the free speech advocacy organization PEN America, said it’s the responsibility of faculty to help all students get the most out of what’s being taught. Some accommodations — like those for students with disabilities or religious students who need to reschedule exams for religious holidays — help faculty meet that goal, she said. This one, she said, does not. 

Rather than “encourage students to shut their eyes or plug their ears or throw a book out the window,” she said, “You encourage students to engage with ideas, and you provide them with the support that they need — which can be different for individual students — so that they are able to complete the work.”

“Being exposed to ideas that you disagree with doesn’t mean you’re going to change your mind, but it should make you clearer about what it is that you believe and why,” Reid added.

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Wells, a zoology major, was taking the film course to fulfill a general education arts credit. After dropping it, she had more than two dozen other classes to choose from to earn that credit. She picked photography. 

But if she had needed the course to graduate, she said she would have had to swallow her discomfort or work up the courage to talk to her professor about an alternative assignment. In the case of the film studies course, perhaps she could have watched a different coming-of-age film, or another film by a Black screenwriter — depending on the goal of that assignment. (Her professor declined to comment.) 

Seth Mulkey, a junior at Utah State University in Logan, said he felt uncomfortable in his general education biology class when the course topic turned to evolution. Mulkey, an evangelical Christian, said he believes that God created the Earth in seven days.

“It can be a bit disheartening to have to learn about something and have something proposed as fact when it’s not something that you’re in agreement with,” Mulkey said. He tries to keep his beliefs to himself and instead, he said, “I’ll do my best to engage from an intellectual standpoint with this idea. So, if this is the assumption we’re making about how this works, we’ll talk about it, we’ll see what conclusions are there.” 

Even if the law had been in effect when he took that biology class, Mulkey said he wouldn’t have asked for an accommodation to get out of uncomfortable group discussions. But writing assignments might have been a different story. 

“If the assignment were to write an essay supporting this view, write an essay about why evolution is correct and why it is the right view of the creation of the world — I think at that point, I would want to step back,” Mulkey said. 

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Utah appears to be the most religious state in the country. About 76 percent of Utah residents are religious, compared to only about 49 percent nationwide, according to a 2024 report from the Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah. Data from the Pew Research Center shows that about 50 percent of all residents are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and another 13 percent identify as members of other Christian denominations. 

Michael J. Petersen, a Republican state representative from Logan, said the idea for the bill came after his daughter was assigned to write a letter to a legislator in support of LGBTQ+ rights as part of a master’s degree program at an out-of-state college. The assignment was in conflict with her beliefs, so she called her dad for help. 

He helped her write “something that was very, very bland.” She moved on — and he began drafting the legislation. 

Had Petersen’s daughter been an undergraduate student at a public college in Utah, the law would have helped her in two ways. It would have prohibited her instructor from requiring that she take a specific public stance (such as sending a letter) on anything that is a “political, social, religious, moral, or community matter.” And it would have allowed her to ask her professor for an alternative assignment.

Petersen said he believes that his daughter’s assignment was to write the letter and also send it. (The Hechinger Report was not able to independently confirm this.)

Most faculty and education advocates, whatever their politics, agree that requiring her to send the letter would be inappropriate.

Mike Gavin, the president and CEO of the Alliance for Higher Education, said it is reasonable for a professor to ask a student to take on other perspectives during an in-class debate or in a written assignment. But it shouldn’t be taken outside the classroom. 

“In no way, shape or form should they be required to publicly sign their names to something. That would be very problematic,” Gavin said. “That, I think, would be a personnel issue that an institution should handle. That is not an academic freedom issue. That is actually using students for things that are political.” 

And, he said, in 30 years in higher education he’s never heard of it happening. 

Gavin said he thinks it’s unnecessary to give students such broad permission to opt out of coursework that conflicts with their beliefs. There are cases in which it’s appropriate, but those already come up and are handled on a case-by-case basis between professors and students, he said. 

“It’s entirely probable — I say this facetiously and also seriously — that a freshman in college doesn’t know everything yet,” Gavin said. “They need to engage with ideas they have not come across. Even if they end up being uncomfortable for a minute, that doesn’t mean that they’re traumatized.” 

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Outside of Utah, many people might gawk at the idea of students opting out of coursework that makes them feel uncomfortable, and worry about the broader implications of such a policy. But among Utahns, there seem to be wider-ranging and more nuanced perspectives.

It’s partly because they’ve been down this road before. In 1998, a Mormon theater student at the University of Utah objected to reading a script with profanity. The student sued the university, accusing faculty of essentially pushing her out after she was given the choice to recite the lines as written or leave the program. 

A settlement agreement required the university to write a policy to deal with coursework objections related to sincerely held beliefs. But the policy still requires that students be able to understand and articulate ideas and theories that are important to the course, regardless of whether they agree with or believe them. The new law does away with that requirement. 

High school speech and debate allows students to find common ground 

Sarah Projansky, the vice provost for faculty and academic affairs at the University of Utah and a professor of film and gender studies who has examined the representation of sexual violence in film and media, said she’s had students walk out of class film screenings during intense moments. If a student says they can’t watch a certain film, she says she works with them to find an alternative. 

“It’s not my business why a student can’t be there. Religion, sincerely held belief of conscience, memory, family memory. It doesn’t matter, they can’t be there,” Projansky said. “Anything that’s not pedagogically necessary is very easy to accommodate.”

Nicole Allen, a communications professor at Utah State, said she thought the law was “a solution in search of a problem,” given existing policies at public institutions and the fact that most professors are able to handle these issues on a case-by-case basis. 

Still, she thinks there’s no need for students to experience “gratuitous discomfort” in the name of academia, she said, as long as accommodations wouldn’t take away from the big-picture goals of the course. 

Although the law doesn’t concern what professors are allowed to teach, some worry that it could still influence academic freedom.

Reid, of PEN America, worries that faculty may overcorrect. They might leave controversial reading materials off their syllabuses or dodge subjects that tend to make students feel uncomfortable, in order to avoid consequences. Those range from the extra work of writing new assignments and test questions to the bureaucratic headache that comes with denying a request to, in the worst and least likely scenario, becoming caught up in a public controversy if a student takes issue with something they’re being taught. 

She said it makes sense that professors would not want to end up like Melissa McCoul, who was fired from Texas A&M University after a student recorded her teaching about gender identity, or Mel Curth, the graduate teaching assistant who lost her job at the University of Oklahoma after she failed a student who had turned in a poorly written psychology paper using only the Bible as a source. 

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Though students can now choose to opt out of coursework on difficult topics, many Utah public colleges go to great lengths to encourage them to do the opposite outside the classroom. Many institutions host regular forums where students can come together for facilitated conversations on controversial topics and engage with classmates who hold differing opinions. Often, the colleges offer free lunch to incentivize students to dig into tough topics. 

At Weber State, the dialogue programming is run by the Walker Institute of Politics and Public Service. On a recent Wednesday, a group of students, staff, and current and retired professors came together at a long, conference room table to discuss the war in Iran over sub sandwiches and chips. 

Strict rules protect the integrity of conversations: Everyone has to read the same article, there’s to be no use of tech devices and no note-taking, and nothing that is said should be shared outside that space. 

Leah A. Murray, the institute’s director and a professor of political science and philosophy, said the rules exist so that everyone feels comfortable speaking freely. (The group made an exception to the no note-taking rule for the reporter in the room.) 

Sometimes Murray selects the topic, but sometimes the topic comes from a student.

Adam Nichols, a 43-year-old junior who is studying to become a high school teacher, said he proposed the idea to Murray because he wanted to be able to talk about the Iran conflict with people in his life, but he felt he didn’t quite have the language to feel comfortable doing so.

When he’s been forced to reckon with his strongly held beliefs, both in class and in various Walker Institute Talks, he said, “It forces me to reassess other areas where I may have been wrong. And I would much rather be wrong and be corrected than to continue under those false pretenses.” 

Despite her appreciation for difficult conversations with people she doesn’t necessarily agree with, Murray sees value in making the types of accommodations in the law. Her views are informed by her own experience as a vegan, animal-loving undergraduate who opted to fulfill her science requirement with geology instead of biology to avoid having to dissect a pig.

“I was unwilling to do that,” Murray said. “It was a violation of my conscience at that time.”

She said that experience has also informed the way she handles difficult issues with her students. At the beginning of each term, she says, “If you’re going to go to hell for learning this, please drop this class.”

She delivers it just like that, she said, and her students always laugh. But she’s serious. 

“I don’t want to be responsible for your salvation being denied because you learn something in this class.”

Contact staff writer Olivia Sanchez at 212-678-8402 or osanchez@hechingerreport.org. 

This story about religious beliefs and college students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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