To address the lack of a current unifying body for religious students on campus, members of Interfaith Alliance are advocating for the establishment of an Office of Religious and Spiritual Life.

For the past two years, students worked on a proposal for the new center, which they presented to Provost Holden Thorp at the end of last semester after meeting with religious student group advisors and faculty members.

In this proposal, students outlined their suggestions for the new center, many of which were based on aspects of existing offices at Washington University’s peer institutions, like the University of Southern California, Princeton University and Stanford University. Similar universities have a designated Office of Religious Life led by a dean who may also serve as a professional religious leader, such as a reverend or rabbi.

While a nonsectarian institution, Washington University is home to almost 20 officially-recognized religious groups. Many organizations are funded by Student Union and are entirely student-run, while others are served by professional religious leaders.

Junior Ali Elahi, president of Interfaith Alliance and one of the proposal’s authors, views the University’s lack of an official religious focus as a potential benefit.

“Religion is something that the administration has not ignored, but diverted—because that’s just the nature of our campus…It’s tough to get this established, but the advantage is that we don’t have any specific obligations that would hinder something like this from making further progress,” Elahi said. “It provides an opportunity for Washington University to show the country and other secular campuses across the country how [they] can properly establish an office like this and how [it] can help a school’s mission while also fostering student growth.”

Students hope to establish a model similar to other schools, with a new dean position that would oversee an office on campus with a full staff of employees to coordinate interfaith programming, offer mental health counseling and provide interfaith training for faculty members. However, some adjustments had to be made to account for the University’s non-secular status.

“A few years ago, we thought it would be more of a chaplain position, but in talking to higher-level administrators it became very clear that they would never approve anything that had such an overtly religious connotation,” senior Sydney Curtis, vice president of Interfaith Alliance, said. “Then we moved to a dean. [The role would have] an administrative title, but would be serving the religious community but without being necessarily a religiously-ordained person.”

After gaining Thorp’s approval, implementation of the proposal was moved to the Division of Student Affairs, where Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives James Parker and Dean of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion Emelyn dela Pena have been working to decide which aspects of the plan can be used at Washington University.

In the coming months, Parker and dela Pena will travel to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to observe their Offices of Religious Life, and will Skype with other peer institutions to formulate a more concrete plan.

The current organization tasked with oversight of officially-recognized student religious groups on campus is the Interfaith Campus Ministries Association (IFCMA). IFCMA is a coalition of representatives from faith groups that meets monthly; specifically, professional religious leaders like rabbis, priests, ministers and pastors, with student group advisors attending on behalf of University religious groups that do not have clergy.

While IFCMA provides a means for religious leaders to communicate, student organizers believe it does not provide all needed services for the religious community on campus. Notably, IFCMA offers administrative advice and support, but is not focused on student programming, and its members primarily come from Christian and Jewish groups, meaning Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Baha’i student interests are not fully represented.

“We simply don’t have the funding that some of these big, house-based religious groups do to have a full-time staff to represent [our interests],” Rehan Choudhury, junior and co-president of the Muslim Student Association, said. “[Without IFCMA representation] we don’t understand what purpose they can help serve in unifying [groups] outside of what we can do as students.”

Celia Kennedy, senior and interfaith chair for Catholic Student Union, thinks the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life will be beneficial for those students who aren’t represented by IFCMA, many of which are also not represented by an existing student religious group.

“I think it’s important that it exists for students that don’t have student groups for their religion…those students don’t have anyone [on campus] to go to if they’re having some problem or question,” Kennedy, who has helped with the proposal for the new office, said.

Many leaders of religious groups on campus have voiced support of the new office and the ways in which it could provide administrative and logistical support.

“At Washington University [Jewish students are] lucky to have a really big community, and I want other students of other religious minorities to be able to have that community and be able to advocate for themselves,” senior and president of Hillel Leadership Council Hannah Sugarman said. “It’s definitely helpful when there are formal structures in place and if that’s the type of formal structure they need we should be able to give it to them.”

Senior Michael Almisry, treasurer of Orthodox Christian Fellowship, a relatively new religious group on campus that gained SU recognition last semester, believes the office will better facilitate communication between religious groups.

“Having support from more established groups would definitely be very helpful to get stuff up and running,” Almisry said. “Building more bridges and making [those connections] easier would be ideal just to help us really understand more about our beliefs and the role we have to play.”

Moving forward, student organizers hope to continue to offer input on Parker and dela Pena’s choices. However, despite their recent successes, students recognize the long road ahead.

“It’s sort of daunting to see because we have nothing of this sort on our campus. Going from nothing to envisioning something is a very scary task,” Elahi said.

To read more about religion on campus, pick up Student Life’s special issue WU: In Focus, on newsstands Nov. 29.