Blog Articles

Stray Thoughts: Faith and Spirituality

August 3, 2016 by Mark Wood Comments Off

PCM-summer2016text58-web2_Page_09_Image_0003 Pomona’s original seal, emblazoned with the words “Our Tribute to Christian Civilization,” adorned every Pomona diploma for almost a century. Appropriate in 1887 for a church-founded college where theology was part of the curriculum, it slowly became an anachronism, as the College cut ties with the church and drew students from many traditions. Steve Glass ’57 still laughs good-naturedly about receiving a diploma imprinted with that motto just before going to Bridges Hall of Music to be married in a traditional Jewish ceremony.

Over the years, as American culture grew steadily more secular, American colleges—once places for reinforcing inherited belief systems—became, instead, places for questioning them. I was reminded of this fact as I prepared for this issue, when a couple of students declined to take part because their parents weren’t yet aware of their evolving beliefs.

Just in the past decade, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, the portion of the “millennial” generation with no religious affiliation has grown from a quarter to more than a third. Pomona students may be slightly ahead of that curve, judging by the Princeton Review’s rather eclectic rankings, in which Pomona seems to be perennially listed in the top 10 for “least religious students.” (Last year, we were number nine.)

But another study, conducted at UCLA in the early 2000s, found that while religious affiliation typically declines during those college years, “spirituality”—defined as “an active quest for answers to life’s ‘big questions,’ a global worldview that transcends ethnocentrism and egocentrism, a sense of caring and compassion for others coupled with a lifestyle that includes service to others”—actually increases.

That’s one of the reasons why institutions across the country are beefing up offices that provide spiritual counseling and promote religious expression or community service. Here at The Claremont Colleges, for example, the Office of Chaplains recently appointed a new Muslim chaplain, who joins Catholic, Protestant and Jewish chaplains at the McAlister Center to support the needs of individual students and groups spanning a wide spectrum of beliefs.

Since 1914, Pomona’s gates have welcomed students who are “eager, thoughtful and reverent” and encouraged them to “bear their added riches in trust” for humankind. Today we may understand those words a bit differently than when they were first carved. We may speak about reverence for truth instead of reverence for a particular deity. We may discuss the ethic of helping others without framing it in a religious context. But Pomona students continue to keep the faith in their own individual ways.

—MW

Archives: The Cain Mystery

August 3, 2016 by Mark Wood Comments Off

PCM-summer2016text58-web2_Page_14_Image_0001 ITEM: Class cane
DATE: 1926
DESCRIPTION: Tapering hardwood walking cane 35 inches long, with a 5-inch curved handle.
ORIGIN: Unknown

The tradition of college canes seems to have been fairly common in the United States during the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. At Amherst College, for instance, freshmen had to wear a beanie, but as sophomores, they could wear a class top hat and carry a class cane. At Dartmouth College, the eagerness of first-year students to gain these status symbols led to a yearly competition called the Cane Rush, eventually banned for the violence it provoked. Today few remnants of that tradition survive. At Dartmouth, during Commencement, graduating seniors still carry canes topped with carvings related to their senior society—such as a griffin or a phoenix. And at Amherst, the tradition had a brief revival in 2003, when the College awarded specially designed class canes to all of its graduating seniors.
At Pomona there are only a few tantalizing references to the cane tradition. For instance, a description of campus activities in 1911 says: “If freshmen won both the Pole Rush and the subsequent freshman-sophomore football game, they got to carry around canes for a few weeks. If the sophomores won, they got to punish the freshmen by making them wear something embarrassing and smacking them with paddles if they refused.”
The cane pictured here is from the Class of 1926, as evidenced by the inlaid metal strip embossed with the totem pole design that was the symbol of that class, also to be found in the pages of that year’s Metate yearbook. Beyond that we know nothing. It was discovered in a closet of the Alumni Relations Office in Seaver House, its provenance and history unknown. If you have information to share about this cane or about the class cane tradition at Pomona, we invite you to contact us.

If you have an item from Pomona’s history that you would like to see preserved in the Pomona College Archives, please call 909-621-8138.

Backstage: Return of the Oaks

August 3, 2016 by Carla Guerrero ’06 Comments Off

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The mesa oak, with its bluish-green leaves and majestic stature, was almost completely wiped out from the landscape of Claremont and surrounding areas more than a century ago. Now Pomona’s bringing this endangered native tree back to campus, thanks to the work of veteran groundskeeper Kevin Quanstrom.

Since 2006, crews have planted about 30 mesa oak trees, also known as the Engelmann or Pasadena oak, in and around the College. Quanstrom, assistant director of grounds and housekeeping, says adding the mesa to the campus’ much larger number—in the hundreds—of coast live oaks helps diversify and strengthen Pomona’s tree population.

More than the bluish leaf color sets the mesa oaks apart: These trees are less susceptible to sudden oak death caused by pests and disease brought on by the ongoing drought, which took its toll on some of the older coast live oak trees that once lined Bonita Avenue. Quanstrom and his team had to remove those damaged trees when the roadway was rebuilt a few years ago, replacing them with the mesa.

“It’s important to understand native plants and to put native plants where you can,” says Quanstrom, who has worked at Pomona since 2004. “When going from nonnative to native plants, you’re always going to save water because native plants tend to be dormant in the summertime. People should care—these trees were part of the ecosystem before we got here, and once the trees are more established, they will help save water.”

With new developments across campus, Quanstrom took advantage of the opportunities to lay down the mesa oak around the Studio Art Hall and Sontag Greek Theatre, along Columbia Avenue and on the east side of Oldenborg Center.

Quanstrom has extensive experience with native habitat restoration, and although the tree is not readily found at local nurseries or big-name home improvement stores, he tracked down a grower in Riverside who could provide them.

Though always outnumbered by the more prolific coast live oaks, mesa oaks were most plentiful up to the mid-19th century, thriving in an area running from Pasadena as far south as Baja California. Then numbers dwindled as a result of logging. “It was very popular for lumber because it’s a very straight oak tree,” says Quanstrom.

At the same time, settlers began to fill the area and citrus trees replaced native vegetation, says Environmental Analysis Professor Char Miller, who notes that the mesa was a key timber used to shore up the new houses and buildings.

“My bet is that some of the College’s earliest buildings may have contained lumber milled from this local tree. The mesa oak largely disappeared from its historic sites by the early 20th century, and its loss is one of the reasons my wife and I planted one in our backyard, a small reclaiming of this area’s environmental past.”

Back on campus, the oak plantings are part of a larger effort to introduce drought-tolerant plants, but Miller finds the return of the majestic trees to be a particular point of pride. “This restoration project is a marker of the College’s sustainability commitments and our willingness to invest in making the grounds less thirsty, more resilient,” he says.

Milestones: Commencement 2016

August 3, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

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“You’re sitting here at the edge of opportunity. You have so much power and so much reach—much more reach than any generation before you. You have the same tools that we had—you can work hard, you can vote, you can speak out—but you have a whole set of new tools at your fingertips, literally, and that can help make the world not only better, but a little closer to the 9-year-old’s ideal.”

—Deborah Bial

Founder and president of the Posse Foundation,

speaking to the Class of 2016 at Commencement

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New Faces

August 3, 2016 by Mark Wood Comments Off

Pomona Welcomes New Academic Dean

Audrey Bilger

Pomona’s new vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college, Audrey Bilger, took up her duties on July 1. She came to Pomona from the nearby campus of Claremont McKenna College, where she had been professor of literature and founding faculty director of the Center for Writing & Public Discourse.

“I am thrilled to welcome Audrey to Pomona, where her experience in college governance, knowledge of faculty challenges and aspirations, passion for liberal arts education and her familiarity with The Claremont Colleges will be strong assets,” said Pomona College President David Oxtoby.

In her new position, Bilger will serve as the chief academic officer and play a leading role in shaping and sustaining the intellectual life of the Pomona community.

“As a longtime member of the Claremont Consortium, I am familiar with Pomona’s strengths and history,” said Bilger. “I look forward to becoming even better acquainted with the community and to working with faculty, students, staff and other stakeholders to continue to foster the ideals of a liberal arts education in an inclusive environment.”

At Claremont McKenna, Bilger served as chair of the Department of Literature and as coordinator of gender studies. She also served on major committees, including the Board of Trustees Academic Affairs Committee, President’s Advisory Committee on Diversity, curriculum committee, WASC reaccreditation and the appointments, promotion and tenure committee. Among other significant contributions, she chaired of the working group on academic resources for international, first-generation, low-income and underrepresented minority students.

In 2014–15 she held an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellowship at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), with a placement in the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, where she worked closely with UCR’s leadership team. She was involved in major projects during her fellowship, including budget redesign, organizational excellence and a master planning study. She also participated in a working group charged with establishing a collaborative leadership model for faculty, staff and students.

Bilger has authored numerous scholarly articles and books, including Here Come the Brides! Reflections on Lesbian Love and Marriage, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and Laughing Feminism: Subversive Comedy in Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen.

She is a member of the Ms. Magazine Committee of Scholars and serves on the editorial boards of Pickering and Chatto’s Gender and Genre series and the Frances Burney Journal. Her work has appeared in Ms., the Paris Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

She received her doctoral and master of arts degrees in English at the University of Virginia and her undergraduate degree in philosophy at Oklahoma State University.

Bilger is married to Cheryl Pawelski, a Grammy Award–winning producer and cofounder of the Omnivore Entertainment Group, who serves on the National Board of Trustees for the Recording Academy.

New Faces on the Board

Three new faces and two familiar ones joined the ranks of Pomona’s Board of Trustees this summer. Elected for the first time were Kiki Ramos Gindler ’83, Osman Kibar ’92 and Jeff Parks ’02. Jennifer Doudna ’85 rejoined the Board after a four-year hiatus, and ex-officio member Christina Wire ’87 was elected to the Board in her own right.

Jennifer Doudna ’85 is a professor of molecular and cell biology and chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where she holds the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. As a co-inventor of CRISPR-Cas9, a process that revolutionized gene editing, she has received numerous honors, including the 2014 Breakthrough Prize and both the Gairdner Award and election to the Royal Society in 2016. A chemistry major, she earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Kiki Ramos Gindler ’83 earned her juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School and specialized in corporate and entertainment law. Today she devotes time to writing, civic affairs and support for the arts. The first Latina president of the Board of Directors for Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, she serves on the boards of the Los Angeles Opera and the Music Center and is a member of the Blue Ribbon and the National Council for the American Theatre. A philosophy major, she has chaired Pomona reunion committees and hosted several alumni events.

Osman Kibar ’92 is founder/CEO of Samumed, LLC, a firm developing drugs for degenerative diseases, regenerative medicine and oncology. Featured on the cover of Forbes Magazine’s “Global Game Changers” issue, Kibar is an entrepreneur and inventor, has founded or co-founded numerous successful companies, and has authored or coauthored many publications and patents. An economics major, he pursued a 3-2 program that also earned him a B.S. in electrical engineering from Caltech. His M.S and Ph.D. in optoelectronics and biophotonics are from UC San Diego.

Jeff Parks ’02 is a founding partner of Riverwood Capital Management, a globally focused private equity firm that invests in high-growth businesses in the technology and services industries, across a variety of geographic regions and company organizations. He serves on the board of directors of several prominent technology companies, including Nutanix, Spredfast and LogRhythm. A double major in mathematics and economics at Pomona, he completed his studies in three years, so he identifies with both the Class of 2002 and the Class of 2003.

Since joining Google in 2007, Christina Wire ’87 has led a variety of groups across sales, marketing, operations, and corporate philanthropy. Today, she is the director of sales and business operations for Google Fiber. She has also held leadership roles at Intel, Stanford University, and the U.S. Department of State, where she began her career. She holds master’s degrees from Columbia University and Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. As National Chair of the Annual Fund, she was an ex-officio member of the Board from 2014 to 2016.

New Knowledge

August 3, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

BIOLOGY: Assistant Professor of Biology Wallace Meyer

Fireproof Ants

Even a fire won’t keep a good ant down, according to research at the Robert J. Bernard Biological Field Station (BFS) on the effects of fire on ants. But which plants grow back after fire and drought does affect ant communities.

For her senior thesis, Tessa Adams ’16 was interested in determining if the ant community changed as a result of the September 2013 brush fire that charred 17 acres at the field station and The Claremont Colleges North Campus Properties. Expectations were that the effects of fire would be significant, but it turns out ants are a hardy, fireproof lot. Results show that there was minimal immediate and no lasting impact on the species from the fire, says Assistant Professor of Biology Wallace Meyer, director of Bernard Field Station, a preserve maintained by The Claremont Colleges that protects the rare native ecosystem of California sage scrub.

“It seems like ant assemblages can withstand a fire. And it makes sense—they are this super-organism. … Fast-moving hot fires affect the surface; meanwhile the ants are down below,” says Meyer. Plus, “fire is a natural component of the ecosystem.”

However, Meyer says, following a fire, areas of land can potentially convert from native flora—in the case of BFS, California sage scrub—to nonnative grasslands, which do affect whether ants return. (Rest assured, 22 species of ants are still making their home at BFS.) Drought, too, affects whether sage scrub or nonnative grasses grow back and which species of ants make their home in each type of habitat. In fact, Meyer says, drought—while not as manifestly dramatic—is actually a larger stressor than fire.

Meyer believes this research is significant because the effects of fire on anything other than plants and mammals are largely unknown. For purposes of conservation and biodiversity management, it is important to understand these effects, since fire is going to become more common, especially in light of global climate change. Adams’ research findings will be used in conservation management plans not only at BFS, but by managers throughout Southern California.

What are the implications for conservation management? First, as long as native plant communities recover, no action is required, says Meyer. Second, which types of plants grow back favors certain ant species. Third, effects of extreme drought correlated with climate changes are real and felt, making long-term management difficult.

Thanks to her high school AP Environmental Science class, Adams came to Pomona knowing she wanted to do ecology research. She says when she stepped foot into BFS, she was awestruck by the California sage scrub habitat.

Adams’ awe quickly turned into action. Adams started working on arthropod research at BFS as a volunteer her first year at Pomona and continued through the years, setting up research sites, collecting pitfall traps, sorting specimens that were collected—and she started seeing a wide range of arthropods at the station.

“After taking Professor Meyer’s Fire Ecology in Southern California class last spring, I became interested in how fire can shape an ecosystem, and I realized that there is little research on the effect of fire on arthropods. I decided to focus my thesis on the effect of fire on ants because the lifestyle of ants, which live in colonies, has the potential to be greatly affected by fire,” says Adams.

She conducted her research by pitfall trapping. She buried a test tube in the ground, with the lip of it level with the surface of the ground. The tube was filled about halfway with a preservation solution—either ethanol or propylene glycol. As the insects ran along the ground, they fell into the trap, and the collected specimens served as a survey of the insects present in an area.

But why choose ants? Adams points to the creatures as providing crucial ecosystem services that make them important to study because of their broad impact on other organisms and their value in helping to determine ways to conserve the environment they inhabit.

So in other words, remember the old proverb: Go to the ant … consider her ways.

—Sneha Abraham

CHEMISTRY: Professor Roberto Garza-López

Molecular Origami

Pomona College Chemistry Professor Roberto Garza-López and his research colleagues have developed a new model that studies how protein molecules fold and unfold—work that has more than a few national institutes interested in the implications for understanding the development of diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Type II diabetes and certain types of cancer.

The research, published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, looks at the protein called Cytochrome c, focusing on the questions of what happens to this protein’s molecules when they don’t fold properly and how this improper unfolding is linked to cancers and other diseases.

Why does a protein fold and unfold in the first place? Long protein molecules start straight, explains Garza-López, but in order to interact with other molecules, they have to fold. “And they have to fold into a very specific shape,” he says. “If they don’t fold properly, then that’s where negative things occur, especially disease. In the paper we published, we are looking at the opposite effect: we’re looking at the protein that is already folded to see how it unfolds.”

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are providing funding for further research and are interested in what the team’s findings reveal about the early development of diseases. Garza-López is working with Caltech Professor Harry B. Gray and DePaul University Professor John J. Kozak.

In order to visualize the protein molecule’s many folds, students working in Garza-López’s lab create 3-D structures of some of the proteins, like Cytochrome c (pictured here). “Students are very good with computers, at visualizing molecules and doing calculations, but they’re also very good at visualizing what those calculations are doing to those molecules.”

Sabari Kumar ’17, a chemistry major who is working in Garza-López’s lab, was acknowledged in the published paper and is now studying the folding and unfolding of proteins related to disease by performing molecular dynamics simulations.

The research by Garza-López , Gray and Kozak continues, and they’re already finished with another manuscript looking at another protein called Intelectin-1, a protein of the intestines and lungs that is able to distinguish between human cells and the cells of bacterial invaders. “This could underpin new strategies to fight infections,” says Garza-López. He adds: “Proteins are very complex. We start with a simple model and we do a lot with that model and try to understand new things about it. That’s how science works.”

—Carla Guerrero

Wig Winners for 2016

August 3, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

PCM-summer2016text58-web2_Page_17_Image_0003 Each spring, juniors and seniors recognize outstanding Pomona professors by selecting the recipients of the Wig Distinguished Professor Award, the highest honor bestowed on faculty. This year’s recipients are (left to right in the image above):

Pierre Englebert, H. Russell Smith Professor of International Relations and professor of politics, teaches courses like Advanced Questions in African Politics, Comparative Politics of Africa, and Political Economy of Development. He has been at Pomona since 1998, and this is his fourth Wig Award.

Sharon Goto, professor of psychology and Asian American studies, teaches courses including Asian American Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Psych Approaches: Study of People. She has been at Pomona since 1995, and this is her second Wig Award.

April Mayes ’94, associate professor of history, teaches courses on Afro-Latin American History, Gender & Nation: Modern Latin America, and U.S.-Latin American Relations, among others. She is a graduate of Pomona, and has taught here since 2006. This is her first Wig Award.

Kyla Tompkins, associate professor of English and gender & women’s studies, teaches 19th-Century U.S. Women Writers, Literatures of U.S. Imperialism and Advanced Feminist and Queer Theory, among other classes. She has been at Pomona College since 2004, and this is her first Wig Award.

Jonathan Hall, assistant professor of media studies, teaches courses that include Freud, Film, Fantasy; Japanese Film: Canon to Fringe; and Queer Visions/Queer Theory. He has been at Pomona since 2009, and this is his first Wig Award.

Johanna Hardin ’95, professor of mathematics, teaches courses that include Linear Models, Computational Statistics, and 9 out of 10 Seniors Recommend This Freshman Seminar: Statistics in the Real World. A graduate of Pomona, she has taught at Pomona since 2002. This is her first Wig Award.

Michelle Zemel, assistant professor of economics, teaches courses that include Economic Statistics, Advanced Topics in Banking, and Risk Management in Financial Institutions. She has been at Pomona since 2012, and this is her first Wig Award.

Nicole Weekes, professor of neuroscience, teaches The Human Brain: From Cells to Behavior (with Lab), Neuropsychology (with Lab), and Introduction to Psychological Science. She has been at Pomona since 1998, and this is her fourth Wig Award.

Bulletin Board

August 3, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

Sagehens Celebrate 4/7 with Good Deeds

President David Oxtoby poses with a group of student volunteers on 4/7 Day, 2016

On April 7, Pomona hosted the second annual Celebration of Sagehen Impact to honor and recognize the good work and good will of our community of “everyday Daring Minds.” Sagehens around the world flooded the Pomona Alumni Facebook group with thousands of likes, comments and posts about alumni service projects, while more than 500 students braved spring rain on campus to celebrate this special day of community spirit. 47 chirps to Sagehens near and far for bearing your added riches, and for another year of uplifting community support that is solidifying the 4/7 Celebration of Sagehen Impact as a proud, new Pomona tradition! To see a sampling of posts from alumni participants, visit facebook.com/groups/sagehens and search for #SagehenImpact.

Pomona Book Club

In April, Pomona’s new Alumni Learning & Career Programs team launched the Pomona College Book Club on Goodreads. The Book Club connects Pomona alumni, professors, students, parents and staff around a common love of reading. Become a member by visiting pomona.edu/bookclub to check out a summer reading list of recommendations from some of this year’s Wig Award–winning faculty and share your own favorite books.

Alumni Weekend and Alumni Award Winners

Julian Nava ’51 (center) with professors Tomás Summers Sandoval Jr. and Miguel Tinker Salas

Gretchen Berland ’86

John Edwards ’64

Pat Riggs ’71

Ed Krupp ’66

Alumni Weekend, April 28 through May 1, 2016, brought nearly 1,600 Sagehens home to Claremont for a weekend of fun and reconnection. In addition to cornerstone activities such as class dinners, guest speakers, the alumni vintner wine tasting and the parade of classes, guests of Alumni Weekend 2016 enjoyed tours of the new Studio Art Hall and Millikan Laboratory, tasted local craft beers with the Class of 2016, attended a Presidential Search Forum and engaged in discussion with executive staff in a town hall–style forum regarding current campus issues. Looking forward to your reunion year or just pining for some California sunshine among hundreds of Sagehen friends? Be sure to mark your calendars for the last weekend of April and return to campus for Alumni Weekend 2017!

Alumni Weekend 2016 was also an occasion for guests to hear from 2016 Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Award winners Gretchen Berland ’86, Ed Krupp ’66, Julian Nava ’51 and to honor Blaisdell winner George C. Wolfe ’76, who could not attend the celebration. Alumni Distinguished Service Awards were presented to John Edwards ’64 and Pat Riggs ’71. Learn more about these annual awards and their deserving recipients at pomona.edu/alumni/services-info/awards.

(For more photos, see Last Look on page 64.)

Thanks to Onetta

47 hearty chirps to Onetta Brooks ’74 for a year of thoughtful leadership and dedicated service as Pomona’s 2015–16 President of the Alumni Association! Onetta proved a wonderful steward for the board’s evolution to a more action-oriented group, and exhibited her commitment to a thriving alumni community throughout the year during alumni events and 4/7 activities, organization of responses to the Title IX policy and engagement in conversations about

inclusivity. Many thanks, Onetta!

Travel-Study

Burgundy: The Cradle of the Crusades

May 29–June 10, 2017

Join John Sutton Miner Professor of History and Professor of Classics Ken Wolf on a walking tour of Burgundy. Burgundy, the east-central region of France so well-known for its food and wine, was also an incubator for two of the most distinctive features of the European Middle Ages: monasticism and crusade. This trip provides the perfect context for exploring “holy violence” in the Middle Ages and its implications for the 21st century.

Last Look

August 3, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

Alumni Weekend 2016

Here are a few photos from the 2016 Alumni Weekend, held in April. For information about the event, see the Alumni Bulletin Board.

—Photos by Carlos Puma

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Spiritual Journeys

August 3, 2016 by Mark Wood Comments Off

Meghana Rao ’16

“My experience with Hinduism has a lot to do with community, and the stories within that community. So one way that I express and experience my faith is through dance. I started learning kathak, an Indian classical dance, when I was about 7. It used to be a temple dance, and you would dance it to devotional songs. I don’t know if most people think of dance as a religious experience, but a lot of those devotional songs are very personal for me, so dance has been a very helpful tool to keep me connected to my faith. It’s my way of sharing my culture and my faith with other people.

“Back at home, my religious experience was very community-related. My family would tell the old stories. That community has been a little harder to find here. There is a Hindu community, but it’s such a varied and diverse community that those aspects don’t necessarily come up as much. That’s not to say I don’t connect with people here—I just connect with them in other ways, and my faith has been more of an internal, personal experience. I imagine it’s similar for a lot of people who come here. You meet all these different people, and the ways that you connect are not necessarily through your faith.

“At home, every morning my sister and I would just sit and say this chant called the Gayatri Mantra, which you’re supposed to say nine times every morning. It’s about greeting the sun and accepting the knowledge that it gives you. Here, it just didn’t seem like the space to do that. If you have a roommate, for example, she may sleep late and you don’t want to wake her up. So that’s become an internal thing for me. When I see the sun, I think about it, but I don’t physically chant every morning. That’s an example of how it was more of a communal activity for me at home, whereas here it’s an individual thing that I say to myself. I don’t want to impose my faith on other people. It is a personal thing, and I’m OK with that.

“A lot of Hindusim is kind of a philosophy about life. It’s an outlook on how life should be lived. It’s not necessarily tied to a higher power. There’s freedom for you to shape your own philosophy and views on life within the culture and within the faith. The creation myths and things like that, I take as myths. I don’t necessarily take them as true, and that’s a personal choice. So for me there hasn’t really been that conflict between faith and academics, because I think of it in more of a symbolic sense.

“Every night before I go to bed I say prayers. In some ways, it’s more like a habit than something intentional, but I just can’t go to sleep until I’ve said them, even if it’s just kind of whispering them to myself. I think it’s kind of a connection to home.”

Jose Ruiz ’16

“My parents are from Mexico and they grew up Catholic. It’s ingrained in the culture. So just picking that up as I grew up at home, it became a part of me as well. In high school I really got curious about the religion itself, and the morals it teaches and the lessons that Catholicism has to offer. So I spent a lot of my free time just kind of exploring the Bible, exploring religious texts, spending time with youth groups at church.

“I think just coming to campus, you get this perception that there’s no presence of religion here, or that it’s kind of uncomfortable to talk openly about your religious beliefs. But as you spend more and more time here and talk to more and more people, you do find a sense of community, people who will relate to you on a religious basis. At the same time, you also end up talking to students who challenge your beliefs in terms of what your particular church has done in the past—different scandals, different wars, different administrative events that reflect badly on your religion. But I think at the end of it all, it’s definitely very constructive to be able to listen to some of those concerns but still to be able to practice your religion, so that you can help to prevent those things from happening again in the future.

“I’ve met a lot of students here who are Jewish, a couple who are Hindu, and a lot of students who are of the Protestant or evangelical faiths. So they’re always very interesting, in that a lot of our beliefs are very similar—like when you’re talking about straight-up morals or how you act with other people. Obviously there are nuances in how different religious ceremonies are held—all the history that goes behind it—but I’ve definitely been able to talk to people of different faith backgrounds and help my faith grow because of that.

“Religion evolves over time, just depending on the experiences that you go through in your life, so I guess coming to college in itself can be a way for you to strengthen your religious beliefs and anchor yourself to the beliefs and the morals that are important to you. A lot of students come here and they take whatever opportunity they can get to let go of their religion—because it was imposed on them by their parents or it just didn’t feel right or they want to experiment with other types of belief systems—and so I think in a sense that’s a good way for us to mature and kind of figure ourselves out better.

“Just being challenged about my beliefs and being able to talk to other people about their beliefs and religious experiences, I was able to learn from those and strengthen my own belief in the Catholic Church and how it helps me get through life.”

Andrew Nguy ’19

“It’s a story that a lot of young Buddhists share. Someone dies, and because of the funeral rites, there is some sort of religion involved, and Buddhism happened to be the one for my grandma, so her funeral was really where things started for me, and it’s just grown from there.

“My daily routine has shifted over the course of the school year. The first semester I was pretty good, waking up early. I have an 8 a.m. class almost every day, so I would wake up at 6, brush my teeth, get some homework done if I needed to and spend about a half hour chanting the Universal Gate chapter of the Lotus Sutra for its emphasis on compassion and meditating before anybody else was up. Since then, it’s gone from a morning routine to more of a nightly routine. Since now I have more time in the evening, I started doing that—same routine, half an hour or so, but more in the evening than in the morning. And then of course, these past few weeks, with finals coming up, it’s gone from half an hour to 15 minutes to 10 minutes, to ‘Oops, I forgot today. I’ll try again tomorrow.’ That’s the life of a student.

“You won’t see me meditating in class, but the things in Buddhism show up almost everywhere in life, and I can spot it now after being Buddhist for a few years. I can see how conflicts come about. And how, if I get angry as a response to that conflict, it usually only gets worse from there. Realizing that and being able to stop myself before impulse takes over, I’m able to keep the situation a bit calmer and more conducive to actually resolving an issue.

“Being a student, it’s hard to have time in general, and time for what most people think is sitting around doing nothing is even harder. So my compromise is I do a lot of walking meditation when I’m on my way to class and in between classes. Instead of walking to class with a friend, having a nice chat about who-knows-what, I can walk and just kind of focus on my breath, focus on my footsteps as I’m walking, and just be mindful about what I’m doing. Another method I use is recitation. I use the name of Avalokite´svara Bodhisattva, the main figure in the Universal Gate chapter, as a point of focus. Concentrating on the syllables of the name and the compassion it’s associated with, I can use it as my meditation anywhere, even when I’m waiting in line for lunch.

“The purpose of it is more to be able to observe and understand the mind—which might have something to do with my being a psych major—but understanding the mind in a different context. I think the benefits of meditation show up in a lot of ways. If you were to have met me four or five years ago, before I really learned much about Buddhism, I was really impulsive and—I’m not going to lie—I still am sometimes. But meditation has helped me recognize the patterns and my habits. When I’m about to make a rash decision, it kind of pulls me back and says, ‘Stop and think about that first.’”

Ilana Cohen ’16

“This is not unique to Judaism, but the time and the cycle are very important. So for us, it’s Friday night through the day of Saturday and observing that as Shabbat in some way. Here, that has meant being at Hillel on Friday nights, pretty regularly. A lot of times, that experience would start for me at about 11 o’clock on Friday when we would pick up the food from the dining halls and bring it over here to the McAlister Center and start cooking for the people who were coming to Shabbat dinner that night. Then we would get the space ready, and often—not every week, but often—I would lead services here in the library. That, for me, was a process of recapturing the Shabbat experience of my synagogue, growing up. Then we would all do dinner together.

“There are many prayers in Judaism that you can’t say unless you have a minyan of people. You wouldn’t say them unless you have that quorum, and there are lots of different reasons why that might be true, but my favorite that I’ve heard is that it’s not that you need 10 voices so that God can hear you—it’s because then somebody does hear you. There are people around you to make the prayer work, because now there are people who know that you’ve said that prayer and support you in doing that. So any time that I’m questioning—well, why am I doing this in a language I don’t really understand?—I know that this is the way to build a community that will be supportive to me.

“So community is very important to me, and the music is also very important, and the fact that it is my history, and it almost wasn’t. My grandmother came out of Austria on the Kindertransport. It’s never why I’ve started a new Jewish practice, but there are always moments where I think, ‘This is just my family’s history.’

“Personally, I almost never use the word ‘faith.’ So when I was thinking about coming here, I was thinking, ‘How am I going to answer these questions?’ I see how it’s a word that broadly allows for anybody’s religious experience, but I think of its association with ‘blind faith,’ and believing or trusting. For me, the religious experience is much more about practice and about learning. Most importantly, from the time I was very little, any participation in Jewish practice was my choice.

Ideologically, nothing I’ve learned or been taught in college is in conflict with my understanding of Judaism, and I didn’t expect it to be. I took a Religious Studies class my first semester, and that was the opposite of a conflict. And I would have done more, but I think I prefer studying it in the religious context, and knowing that I don’t have to get that while I’m in college, because Torah study will be as large a part of my future participation in the Jewish community as religious services.”

Jordan Shaheen ’17

“I’m a big proponent of the war-room theory, which is that you fight all your battles in prayer, not in person. So I kind of get everything I need to get out in the morning in prayer, and then I know I’ve got something there that will get me through the day, until I recharge the next morning.

“I had a church back home that I still go to occasionally. I knew I wanted faith in my life and I wanted a relationship with God, but I’d never really figured out a way to do it. I struggled for years, always reading, always learning about it. There were times when I had atheistic tendencies, times when I wanted to be all-in but didn’t know how to be all-in. Here at school, I finally found a place in the church and was able to really blossom in that role. Now I’m looking at going to divinity school and getting a doctorate of theology and going into the ministry. The thing I love about the Presbyterian Church most is that most ministers have doctorates, so it’s more of an academic denomination, which I’ve come to really appreciate.

“I don’t go out evangelizing—I don’t talk about it at all unless people come to me with questions. It’s something that’s very important to me, and I’m more than happy to talk about it, but I think it’s one of those things where people have to come to you with questions, or else it’s not going to be a meaningful conversation. So I kind of keep to myself, but I think there are a lot more people here for whom religion is important than will say so. It’s kind of an underground group. I know that sounds funny, but there are a lot of people here who are very religious—and not just people who will admit they’re Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist or whatever, but people to whom it’s very important but who don’t talk about it much. So you just have to find a way to reach out to those people and you’ll find a pretty cool community that you didn’t know was there.

“I’ve never found that my religion clashes with my work here. A lot of what I do in my major is investigating the early forms of Abrahamic texts, looking at the Socratic traditions and the pagan traditions and their influence or lack thereof on the blossoming of Abrahamic traditions throughout the Mediterranean. So a lot of the texts I get to read are foundational Christian texts, foundational Hebrew texts, foundational Islamic texts. And I get a really good sense of how that all plays together. Are there questions that arise, or inconsistencies that I notice and look into? Absolutely. But as Reverend Tharpe, who used to be the Protestant chaplain here, always says, ‘Any true Christian is agnostic three days a week.’ If you’re not questioning, you’re not learning and growing.”

Molly Keller ’19

“I was raised Catholic, baptized, had my first communion, and went to an Episcopalian school from age 3 through fifth grade. Then I transferred to a very liberal private school where my friends were mostly Jewish. But even when I was going to church and Sunday school and at Episcopalian school and being taught religious knowledge, I never felt that invested in it. I remember in fourth grade we had to draw a picture of God, and I was very stubborn, so my compromise with the teacher was drawing a church with little squiggly lines around the steeple to represent a spirit. That was at age 9.

“I didn’t really think about religion very much in high school. It just wasn’t very relevant to my life. But interestingly enough, since coming to college, unexpectedly, I’ve been exposed to a lot of things that have forced me to reconsider. I definitely am not a devout Christian now or anything like that, but for example, my ID1 class was Cult and Culture with Professor Jordan Kirk, and a lot of the questions we focused on were around the manifestation of a God. And I think one of the things that really changed things for me was—we were reading Stories from Jonestown, and there was a passage about how, for some people, God can just be a warm meal and a job or a roof over their heads.

“And so, shifting from God as this man up in the sky to thinking of it as a word that fills in for certain significances—that kind of changed things for me. And then, I’ve been in Religious Ethics class with Professor Oona Eisenstadt, so being exposed to that, and the way different people have their own Tao in their lives, has changed my thinking.

“Religious Ethics, as she presents it to us, is a class that deals with how to live a good life and how different religions and different thinkers grapple with that question. So actually, a lot of the philosophies that came out of that class—whether they be from religious texts or not—kind of helped me think about how I live my life and how I interact with others. I really liked the Bhagavad-Gita but I also really liked Emmanuel Levinas and the way he talked about our intrinsic obligation to the “Other.” And I think that you see that in religion, but it doesn’t necessarily have to go hand in hand. So there are bits and pieces of philosophy that I use to guide my moral and ethical life.

“Again, I’m not a devout anything, and I don’t know if I believe in a God or many gods, but I’m a little more open to the notion that there may be something out there worth believing in. I just haven’t totally figured out what. But I’m not necessarily looking for anything. When religion was a big part of my life, I just sort of took it as it was. Since it hasn’t been a part of my life, I haven’t felt that anything was missing. But I’m open to things that come my way.”

Vian Zada ’16

“I go up on the roof of Pomona Hall often. Being in this quiet place—surrounded by birds and looking up at the clouds—reminds me of creation. It’s a really nice way to clear my mind and remind myself of what matters to me. That’s what praying does for me. It’s really therapeutic because it dissolves whatever stresses I’m going through. It feels purifying. This may sound cheesy, but part of my faith is just looking at all the marvels around me. My love for life and science and how I see that every day just reinforces my wonder for a greater being.

“I grew up with strict but caring parents who tried to maintain the balance between their culture and sending their kids to American schools. I had a lot of rules at home. So being separated from my parents, it’s been interesting to see how, in my lifestyle, I go about following the tenets of my religion without my parents watching me. No one tells me to pray. My parents are never there when I’m at a party and abstain from drinking. Those are things I do for myself.

“I’m not able to pray five times a day, but I do think about God every day. I do fast, for a lot of other reasons besides the reasons that are given to me. I trust my own judgment, and I make my own decisions. It’s not like I look to the Quran as the only source of how to live my life. I’m in a religious studies class right now called Nourishing Life, and we look at a lot of ancient Chinese texts and a lot of Buddhist and Taoist primary sources, and I find myself agreeing with a lot of what I read. I just believe in taking what appeals to you from different religions and different ideas.

“In Islam there’s a lot of emphasis on being compassionate and respectful toward all others—toward life itself. I think I developed my sense of compassion going to Arabic school every Saturday and learning from my mom—just the Golden Rule, basically. I think all religions are beautiful. Religion in itself is, I think, a wonderful tool for helping one shape one’s moral compass.

“My religion also encourages education. Educating yourself is a duty that you’re supposed to carry throughout your whole life. It’s nice to know that I’m supposed to be here.”

—Photos by Carrie Rosema

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