Greetings all,
My school, the University of Puget Sound, is in the final edits of our proposal for the Obama administration's initiative for interfaith dialogue and community service on college campuses. You can find out more information on it here, but I regret that I did not post this sooner so that you all would have enough time to draft proposals yourselves. That said, I think that you could very well answer Obama's call without it being "official" and yet contribute just as much to interfaith understanding and social justice work.
Beyond simply interfaith dialogue and service work between (sometimes quarreling) religious groups on our campus, we are also trying to create a "hub" of connections for social justice and community service work. Our primary emphasis on the social justice portion of the Obama challenge is to help create a campus culture of service work.
I grew up in Texas and went to an all-girls' Catholic high school. One of the things I admire most about the Catholic Church is its strong commitment to social justice. In high school, you got serious popularity points if you were deeply involved in community service, global social justice, and the like, and 100 hours of direct community service was required of me to graduate. Puget Sound is really different. Puget Sound is apathetic about a lot of things (except our Greek life and their philanthropies are pretty active but are usually exclusive), and most people don't even know that there is a building dedicated to community involvement exists on campus.
We are trying to change that. Not to just get interfaith-related stuff happening, but just to bridge all demographic gaps, come together, and make amazing things happen in our community and elsewhere.
I'll update as cool stuff (or troubles!) occurs on campus.
Peace, and good luck to all of you graduating seniors!
Rebecca Short
U. of Puget Sound '12
Religion, philosophy
Pagan Student Alliance
P.S. I still use my CT5 mug. My university's chaplain wants to steal it from me.
