Better Together Day makes its mark at USU
Utah State University’s Interfaith Student Association hosted events on Thursday to celebrate Better Together Day — an initiative intended to improve interfaith cooperation and religious literacy on campus and beyond.
“Those worries about Islamophobia slowly start to disintegrate,” said Erica Hawvermale, the president of the Interfaith Student Association at Utah State, “when you’re talking to a nice Muslim girl in a hijab who is a chemistry major and is worried about homework and grades and what she’s going to do this weekend. You realize she’s human. It’s not an ‘us vs. them’ thing anymore; you realize that we’re all Aggies, we’re all humans. We’re really striving towards the same goal.”
The Interfaith Student Association started the day with an early morning devotional in the student center and then transitioned into the library, where club members directed students to share quotes and scriptures that inspired them.
“We need to understand different people’s points of view,” said Debbie Waite, an academic adviser at Utah State. “We need to try and find common ground and meet in the middle, as much as we can, and at least have mutual respect.”
Activities ended in Widtsoe Hall with a screening of Mr. and Ms. Iyer, a Bollywood film focused on the struggles of a mixed-faith couple caught in religious conflict in the Middle East.
“The response has been really positive today,” said Alexander Gaeta-Troutner, the marketing and public relations coordinator for Utah State University Interfaith Student Association. “More than anything else, it’s just been enjoyable. It’s been fun to talk to people, to see their faces light up when they eat donuts, to get creative with what they want to write down.”
The Interfaith Student Association has come far since its conception at Utah State. It started two years ago, originally as a research project run by Dr. Bonnie Glass-Coffin and several student researchers. Hawvermale, the current president of the Interfaith Student Association, was one of the original students in on Glass-Coffin’s research team.