The Undergraduate Council of Students is currently working on creating a community-of-faith forum that will discuss the issue of religious intolerance on the Brown campus, an initiative to which some students of faith have responded with skepticism.
The forum, spearheaded by Schuyler von Oeyen '05, UCS's alumni liaison, will meet for the first time before the end of the month to examine how students in various religious groups can feel better integrated into the overall Brown community.
"I feel it is an issue that often does not get talked about," von Oeyen said. "Many of the people who are the problem aren't even aware of it. We want to raise awareness through this forum."
UCS members hope that by creating this small, deliberative group, they can begin to identify the issues of religious intolerance of concern to students at Brown.
"There are lots of people who feel silenced on this campus," said Ashley Harness '05, a member of the Multi-Faith Council, an interfaith student group. "Some feel psychologically marginalized, some feel institutionally marginalized."
On an individual level, religious intolerance is exhibited by inappropriate peer interactions or in classrooms where students may feel they are described categorically or in stereotypical terms, said the Rev. Janet Cooper-Nelson, University chaplain. "I have observed a large territory of ignorance about religion," she said.
Von Oeyen is currently in contact with the Chaplain's Office and the Multi-Faith Council to discuss the logistics of the UCS forum.
Some members of religious groups have expressed skepticism about working with UCS, particularly because the Multi-Faith Council was turned down when applying to become an official UCS group last year.
"There is one problem with bureaucracy," said Sushil Jacob '05, co-founder of Interfaith House. "They often try to reinvent the wheel." According to Jacob, the Multi-Faith Council has been looking at similar issues for a number of years.
UCS is currently discussing incorporating the Multi-Faith Council as an official student group this year, though it has not yet reached a decision.
Categorization as a UCS group opens the possibility of receiving space for meetings and in some cases, funding.
"When the Multi-Faith Council went to UCS to get funding, they were told they were redundant," Cooper-Nelson said. She said she believes this rejection has left religious groups somewhat incensed about collaborating with UCS.
But this year's UCS members are looking to reconnect with religious groups and hope the community of faith forum will be a first step in this direction.
"We want to clean up some of the relations from the past and show them that we are here for them, supporting them, just as we would any other student group," said UCS President Joel Payne '05.
Payne said UCS's forum will be different from Multi-Faith Council and other interfaith groups on campus. "This body is going to work more on integrating groups of faith into the larger campus community," he said. "Multi-Faith Council serves as a way for different religious groups to interact with one another."
Recognizing intolerance
Existing interfaith groups such as the Multi-Faith Council and Interfaith House have already considered a number of issues with respect religion at Brown.
Understanding Islam is one such concern, Jacob said. "There is a palpable need for people to understand this religion today," he said, explaining that after Sept. 11, 2001, Islam was "often pursued with a lot of stereotypes."
Another issue is the marginalization of people of faith as anti-intellectual. "If you don't address religion, that is absurdity and then to say that it is anti-intellectual ... you're not going to come to robust conclusions," Jacob said.
Jacob suggested the most effective way to address this issue is by sponsoring more provocative lecturers to speak on such issues at Brown, rather than simply creating small deliberative groups that discuss the problems.
"For religious intolerance to be combated, we need to have a set of goals," he said. "We need to open it up to debate and sponsor controversial speakers. That's a really good way to start. It's much more accessible to a broader range of people."
Some religious group members said that a tension between Brown's liberal atmosphere and the treatment of religion is one source of intolerance on campus.
"Being liberal doesn't mean being anti-religious," Jacob said. "We are not saying Brown should be less liberal. ... We need to redefine what the parameters of liberal are."
"I think (religion) is something we don't really know how to talk about on a big level," Harness said. "It's a category of diversity that needs to be addressed. It comes bound up in whole cultural systems that are tricky to navigate."
UCS is hoping to help the Brown community address religion more openly, looking at religious intolerance with the same consideration that sexual and racial intolerance have received at Brown, according to von Oeyen.
"Religious intolerance is definitely a huge issue on campus," Jacob said. "It is not necessarily directed at a certain group, but is more an intolerance of religious people in general."
But specific groups do face some forms of intolerance on campus, Jacob said. "Christian fellowship groups set up on the Main Green and talk to people and lots of people don't like this," he said. "They find it too provocative." The result, Jacob said, is that some students may make negative assumptions about a particular faith based on brief interactions they have with these groups.
"Personally, I think that it may be is a struggle, but it's not something that is unique to Brown," said Jamie Witmer '05, a member of College Hill for Christ. Witmer is skeptical of the potential effectiveness of an interfaith group on religious intolerance.
"How much accommodation of different views and prevention of marginalization can actually occur without debunking religion?" Witmer said. "There seems to be a kind of conflict of interest between what College Hill for Christ is about and this idea of opening a dialogue."
Cooper-Nelson believes that though it is important to look at issues of intolerance, it is necessary to open up conversation rather than stifle it. "Often people report intolerance when what they may be feeling is disagreement," she said.
Tamilla Mamedova '07, vice president of the Muslim Students Association, said she thinks the University can benefit from such an open dialogue on the issues. Though she is not familiar with UCS plans for the community of faith forum, past experiences in which the Muslim Students Association met with students of other faiths have been valuable experiences, she said.
"I think it is an amazing idea," Mamedova said of increasing interfaith dialogue on religious issues at Brown. "We don't necessarily know a lot about each other's faith, and in today's environment, you can't afford to do that."
