Student Peacemakers held the largest interfaith event on Rutgers campus, the Forum For Dialogue, this past fall semester. The speaker series was held in the multi-purpose room of the Rutgers Student Center on December 9th at 5:30 pm and had over 150 confirmed RVSPs. The purpose of Forum For Dialogue was to breakdown negative stigmas associated with religion and generate peaceful discussion among faith groups on campus. There were representatives from the Rutgers University Seminary School, RU Sheikh, Humanists, Catholics, Hindus, the Muslim Student Association, Rutgers Hillel, and the Canterbury House. The Rutgers Review interviewed Patrick Parlej, the President of Student Peacemakers, about the role the organization played in planning the event.
RR: The first question is why did you decide to create Forum For Dialogue?
PP: I think the big thing is that religion on TV is getting a really bad rap. You go on CNN, watch the news and you hear about conflicts in Israel and Palestine, you hear about religious extremism in the United States where you’ve got several groups using it to promote hatred. And so if you’re a person who doesn’t particularly care for religion and you’re just watching TV, overtime it can just chip away at you and you start developing these negative predispositions. If I’m just a normal guy watching TV and all I hear about Islam is wars and ISIS or Israel and Palestine conflicts, it’s easy to start developing this sense of Islam being this radical and hateful religion because that’s all you hear on TV — and that’s obviously not true. So the idea was to bring the Muslim Student Association, for example, and give them the opportunity to talk about what their faith is actually about to start dispelling these dispositions that we have because of the media, because of what some people say, because we’re just not exposed to it; that’s the idea behind Forum For Dialogue. And to just add to that point, we believe that students talking to students is this unique relationship because students are old enough and intelligent enough to make policy points, but we’re not so old that we’re entrenched in partisan beliefs. You know, students in general are just more open-minded, more open to new ideas. So if it’s a conversation among students, it’s not quite the same as a professor lecturing, like an adult talking to you. It’s really like, “This is another student. This is someone I could have been to a football game with, to a party with; this could be roommate, my classmate, my friend.” So there’s a certain relatability there and we think students are more willing to listen to other students because of that.
RR: Do you feel like there is a sort of lack on campus that promotes this kind of dialogue that your organization is promoting? What made you decide in particular on “Forum For Dialogue”? How did you get the idea for “Forum For Dialogue”?
PP: To address the first part of that: is there a lack of that? I think, in general, this idea of bringing groups, who may sometimes be at odds with each other together is not an easy task nor is it a very attractive thing to try to do. On campus, Student Peacemakers is this third party group that isn’t affiliated with any religious organization. Student Peacemakers is really just a third party trying to organize and I think the beautiful thing about Student Peacemakers is, you know, it’s hard to disagree with the idea of peace, right? I think if you asked pretty much anyone they’ll be like, “Of course I support peace.” Could you read the second part of the question again?
RR: So basically… I mean you just pretty much answered the question, “Why exactly Forum For Dialogue?” What inspired you to do the Forum?
PP: OK, well, recently a lot of this calendar year – 2014 – has been about religious conflicts in the news: Israel and Palestine heated up a few months ago, in the United States you’ve got religious conflicts related to the Westboro Baptist Church. This is another organization who may come off as not conducive to peace promotion and may represent religion as a whole in a negative light. And especially talking to students who are not religiously affiliated, which by the way I am not particularly religious myself, it’s easy to be sucked into this trap of thinking that religions just seems to be divisive and very partisan. It may seem to some that if one person is of a particular faith, you have to automatically dislike them if you’re of another one. But that’s obviously not the case. It’s really this stereotype, this predisposition that we’re trying to hit at.
RR: Thank you. What problems did you foresee your team running into while figuring out the logistics of the event versus what difficulties you actually encountered?
PP: OK, well, by far the most challenging aspect of putting together any event, and this event is the first annual “Forum For Dialogue,” is getting people to come for the first time. Once you kind of do something yearly then, I think, groups are like, “Oh! We did this last year. Of course we’ll send someone this time.” But the process of emailing, reaching out to groups…it’s hard to keep track of. Our success in finding participants was going through our personal channels saying, “Look I know you go to meetings for this particular organization. Can you ask them if they’re interested [in participating in the event]?” And that is by far the most challenging thing. Like I said this is an annual thing so next year I won’t be here because I’m graduating [in the spring], but the group will live on and there will be another Forum For Dialogue. And I’ll expect to see more groups involved. That was by far the biggest challenge, getting speakers to the event … but it turns out we had some additional unexpected difficulties. For example, the day of the event there was flooding in the student center; a lot of people had exams on this particular Tuesday at 5:30; the weather was really not helpful to us. So we had a bunch of factors emerge that hurt attendance a little bit, but we still had a decent turn out of a little less than 100 people.
RR: What did each representative of the religious groups have to say?
PP: Well certainly their pitches sort of varied and I’m not going to be able to recall exactly what speakers talked about but, I think one of the great commendations I can make on the speakers is that they were all able to relate their faiths to peace. And that was really the theme – that was what we really wanted people to do. We allowed speakers and groups to have not only a speech portion but also a performance portion. Some of the performances we had, for example, included representatives from the Muslim Student Association who read from the Qur’an in Arabic and then translated for us. That was really great because they took the words straight from the text and then they translated them and showed us what the true message was. Several groups did similar things; Rutgers Hillel also read from the Torah. A representative from the Hindu faith performed a traditional Hindu dance. This is fascinating stuff! Especially for me, because I’m coming in as someone who is not particularly faithful myself. I was raised as a Catholic and, for me, I just came away [from the event] with more open eyes. And I use myself as an example because I can only speak for myself but I think that sentiment is true for many attendees. This was the first time I really interacted with those groups and I certainly came away with a better sense of the various faiths. If people came away with it like how I did, then we really did our job.
RR: That was great because you actually answered my next question, “What did you personally take away from the event?” It’s interesting that you talk about the reading of the Qur’an because actually reading the Qur’an has its own method – it’s almost like singing. Anyway I think that it’s lovely that you pointed that out: that it’s almost like a performance and in actually it is almost like a performance. My next question is what other events, goals or missions do you anticipate Peacemakers will undertake in the spring?
PP: Sure. We’re relatively new on campus and we’ve only just started operations about four months ago. Forum For Dialogue was our big step into the mainstream and we tried to make a big impact with the event. And I think we succeeded relative to what we wanted to do. It’s a great feeling when someone comes up to you and is like, “Hey, you’re the Peacemakers guy!” There’s something wonderful about that. The next big event that we’re planning for next semester is organizing Concert For Peace, where New Brunswick bands will come out and play, all the while we’re collecting donations which will go to a children’s charity. The concert would allow Rutgers students to interact with some really cool New Brunswick bands with whom they maybe don’t have a chance to interact. The bands get publicity and we end up helping some really great charities. Who doesn’t like music and peace? Going forward, we would definitely like to interact with charities next semester.
RR: That’s great. So I just have one more question. Based off of what you were talking about, with regards to creating this really cool “Concert for Peace”- I think that’s a great idea! You guys should definitely do it if you can manage it. Which charities were you thinking of? And how are you screening and picking charities?
PP: This is a hard question because [my team and I] have not had a serious discussion so maybe I shouldn’t comment.
RR: Yeah, that’s fine.
PP: {mock-serious tone} We’re preferring not to comment on this time. Sorry Press.
RR: {laughing} OK, sounds good. Thank you!
Bottom photo from Left to right: Philip Ryan Kehoe (Public Relations Chair), Patrick Parlej (President), Fahad Akhtar (Treasurer), Lauren McGowan (Vice President)
To learn more about Student Peacemakers visit www.studentpeacemakers.com.
Olympia Christofinis