A recent town hall-style forum in MacMillan Café open to all students explored the topic of religious diversity.
The Jan. 22 event, called “Connect4 Town Hall: A Different Kind Of Conversation about Religious Diversity,” was co-hosted by Connect4, a student group led by sophomore Fernando Cutz and was devoted to giving Washington University students a safe place to talk about their differences, and Interfaith Youth Core, a religious diversity group not affiliated with Washington University.
Connect4 is the newest incarnation of the Student Diversity Initiative, which Cutz started in response to personal experiences with intolerance. The Student Diversity Initiative recently merged with Campus Week of Dialogue to form Connect4.
“[Before SDI] there was nowhere on campus where you could go to express these things,” said Cutz. “People assume Wash. U. is this perfect place, but there was nowhere to go to make it better.”
The Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) is a nationwide group dedicated to helping young people build “religious diversity and pluralism.” The group defines pluralism as “not diversity, but engaging that diversity.”
Representatives from IFYC structured the evening, which started with a look at how religion is portrayed in the media.
First, attendees were shown the trailer for “God’s Warriors,” a CNN special on Christianity, Judaism and Islam and were asked to analyze critically how religions were being portrayed.
Then, the IFYC showed the trailer for a short film called “Exchange,” which follows a group of young people from the United States and from Jordan exchanging places.
This led to a discussion of the religious environment on campus. Students were given an open floor to address religious issues, “no matter how extreme,” said Hind Makki, a member of the IFYC.
Students from around the room began talking about being tolerated and about feeling sidelined. Freshman Aaron Samuels said that he felt pressure to “be definitive in what [he] believed.” He felt one had pressure to “stake [one’s] claim in a religion or mark [one’s self] as an atheist.”
Senior Michael Morgan, another student, talked about how he had faced misconceptions about his religion many times, even in classes. As a Christian Scientist, he said he often dealt with people who assumed he was a Scientologist or that his religion was not compatible with the theory of evolution. Once, he said a professor taught in a class that Christian Scientists were not allowed to receive blood transfusions, because they considered it to be “eating blood,” which is not true.
“It’s difficult to feel like a one-man army,” said Morgan during the town hall. “It’s really difficult to start discussions with people, but once I do they’re really interested.”
Senior Frank Bergh, an RA for Lee 3, talked about not being sure of how to start a conversation with his residents about religion without offending or alienating them, a topic that interested several others as well.
“Freshman floors are the most diverse communities on our campus by far. These [religious] conversations are what will really propel people to be diverse later in life,” said Bergh.
Frank also said that he’d had difficulty with starting conversations in the past, and shared that he’d received one RA evaluation that had the comment “Too religious for my tastes.”
Cutz stressed the importance of having a place to be open with complaints.
Connect4 has many other ideas for raising student awareness about issues of social justice; the group is planning a socioeconomic diversity event and has tentatively planned a large service project involving all service groups at Wash. U., to take place some time in April.
Cutz counted the town hall on religious diversity a success.
“I thought people were able to express themselves in a supportive environment where we could all learn from each other,” said Cutz. “I look forward to more dialogue on campus.”