...And at Yale.

WEARING a black yarmulke and a black leather jacket and starched white shirt over his Biblically mandated fringed garment, Yale freshman Elisha Dov Hack appears to have nothing in common with the usual diversity agitators. But Hack is the public face of a group who call themselves the Yale Five. The echoes of civil-rights fighters are not accidental: the students, all Orthodox Jews, see themselves as combating yet another form of discrimination.

Yale requires all students to live in residential colleges their first two years. The university believes the colleges are integral parts of the Yale experience. The Yale Five, however, see the dorms as sin shacks, and claim their religion requires a degree of sexual modesty incompatible with college life.

After failing in a nationally publicized attempt to browbeat Yale into exempting them from the housing requirement, the Five retained the services of Nat Lewin, perhaps the most distinguished constitutional lawyer in the country. His championing the students raises the stakes; the outcome of this case will resonate far beyond New Haven.

Which is just what the Yale Five are after. Hack says they are fighting the residence requirement because "part of what we're doing is consciousness raising . . . which is also why we went to the media."

Indeed, the group's methods come straight from the playbook of political correctness. Since they can't cite anything the university does that actually prevents them from practicing their faith, feelings come to the forefront. "I'm upset and hurt by this requirement that I live in the dorms," Hack wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece in September. Their lawsuit scolds Yale for failing to "appreciate their contributions to the richness of the Yale community."

The students' interpretation of Judaism is certainly a marginal one. Roughly sixty Orthodox Jews live in the Yale colleges calmly, practicing modesty and chastity. So the creed Yale stands accused of discriminating against isn't that just of a minority, but of a minority of a minority of a minority. But this doesn't worry Hack.

"They don't feel they have a problem," Hack says of the other Orthodox Jews, his voice rising. "I feel I do have a problem. It's a question of how you feel."

Hack admits he's never seen a naked, or even semi-clad, woman in the colleges. Nor has he witnessed any sort of indecent act. This isn't surprising: none of the plaintiffs has spent a single night in the dorms, choosing instead to live off campus and pay for a dorm room until the case is resolved. Their descriptions of the lasciviousness of campus life stem mostly from imagination and fear.

To be sure, promiscuity is all too common among America's college students. But if Hack had spent some time at his assigned lodgings in Lawrence College, perhaps he would have thought twice about characterizing Yale as "Sodom and Gomorrah." The whole floor, composed of two corridors with about six rooms off each, is single-sex. The suite to which Hack was assigned is notable for the staid lifestyle of its residents, their neighbors say.

"I'm not experiencing any indecency," freshman Jeff Kaplow complained. "It's not as fun as Elisha makes it seem."

Residents of Lawrence seem to agree that it would have been easy for Hack to work out an agreement with his suitemates to respect his attitude toward modesty. "It's kind of sad that he didn't give it a try," Mr. Kaplow said.

The Five have proposed a compromise: students would check off a box on their housing application forms indicating their desire to live in a single-sex suite with fellow students who also wish to refrain from sexual activity. Yale would then group such students together in suites.

However, the Five also demanded that Yale enforce, with threats of expulsion, the chastity of students who choose to live in such suites. Quite naturally, Yale did not want to put itself in the position of policing its students' bedrooms (although such action would be consistent with its role in loco parentis). Hack asks indignantly why, given that the university punishes cheating with expulsion, it shouldn't it be equally severe with moral deviance. But, of course, cheating is an academic offense at odds with the university's central pedagogic purpose. Suddenly, the Yale Five seem less put upon than putting upon.

Indeed, the students aren't even being forced, in any sense, to live in the colleges. For one thing, they could leave Yale and go to an institution that wants actively to promote their values. Hack says the Five won't even consider this option: they want the prestigious Yale diploma. Alternatively, they could continue to live in their assigned college "on paper" -- and pay the $6,850 housing fee --while actually living off campus. This alternative suits the university fine. But Hack says paying money to observe one's religion "sounds like discrimination to me."

The dorm controversy concerns this simple question: Who foots the bill for diversity? Already, Yale voluntarily, and reasonably, provides Orthodox students with kosher meal plans. It gives them mechanical door-locks instead of the magnetic ones standard in the dorms, to allow them not to use electricity on the Sabbath. Yale, like most American institutions, gladly accedes to the peculiarities of salient minorities. (It also does headstands for blacks and cartwheels for gays.) However, if the public pays for the needs of every faction that feels it needs special treatment, it will encourage an almost atomic splintering of society. Only by requiring groups with special needs to internalize the costs of their distinctiveness can society achieve an efficient amount of pluralism.

If the Five win, it will mark a dangerous precedent.