IVY LEAGUE GOMORRAH?

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Spokesman Tom Conroy counters that Yale has never explicitly allowed off-campus living. But, he told a local reporter, "we don't monitor where students sleep"--only whether they have a Yale address, issued when the fee is paid. Besides, he told TIME, "they knew about [the residential rule] when they applied."

The case seems a pale echo of the fiery debates over diversity in the early '90s, when, for example, a Harvard student erected a swastika to protest a classmate's Confederate flag. Today, says UCLA director of residential life Alan Hanson, "multiculturalism isn't really a hot topic." But the growth of religious conservatism could rekindle the flames. "Today you have a larger interest among students in religion, whether it's Orthodox Judaism or...Fundamentalist Christianity," says David Merkowitz of the American Council on Education. One survey indicates that half of freshmen identify themselves as Protestant, up from a third 15 years ago.

In other words, Yale could be the first battleground. "I don't think it's a uniquely Jewish issue," says Yale Fiver Rachel Wohlgelernter. "It's a moral issue."

--With reporting by Gabriel Snyder/New Haven