An edited version was published in On Campus, 2009

My submitted original — with a major correction made in one section


Students of faith at Williams College


MARK E. RONDEAU
WILLIAMSTOWN — One college, many faiths.

Begun by passionately devout Congregationalists, Williams College now hosts a diversity of faiths its founders could have learned about only from books.

Some 30 to 40 religious traditions are represented in the student body at Williams at any one time. Roughly 20 percent of Williams students come from a Roman Catholic background and between 8 and 12 percent are Jewish. The Muslim community on campus consists mostly of international students and is growing in size.

The face of faith at Williams is diverse and it is good. Here are profiles of five students, all graduating seniors, from different faith traditions:

•Fathimath Musthaq (Muslim)•

Fathimath Musthaq is from the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean. She majored in political science, focusing on comparative politics.

“Faith helps me to see the bigger picture. It puts things in perspective. It helps me get over and past obstacles and keeps me focused on what I want,” she said. “Also, it helps me be part of a wonderful community, at home and at Williams.”

She said that Ramadan at Williams is a very special time. “The sense of community is extremely heightened and our community of Muslims (and anyone else who wants to fast) expands beyond the campus,” she said. “Thanks to Muslim student advisor Parvin Hajizadeh, we have members from the Williamstown community take part in the holy celebrations.”

During her freshman year, Fathimath’s non-Muslim roommate fasted with her during Ramadan, a month-long period of fasting and prayer.

Fathimath is a member of the Muslim Student Union, which meets in a room in the basement of the Thompson Chapel. In her sophomore year, she co-chaired this organization.

“I really appreciated the community here. As a freshman coming in, the seniors and the organization were really helpful,” she said. “Parvin has been amazing. She has really looked out for us, and for me especially. I just feel like that’s my family here.”

The college itself has in general been quite supportive of the Muslim community, she said. This includes dining services providing food to help the students observe Ramadan.

At Williams, Fathimath has learned that it is okay to ask questions about religion. “At a liberal school like Williams, one gets challenged on religion quite a lot,” she said. “Interestingly, the main source of challenges for me has been scholarly work and readings for class, discussions in class. But these have helped me see that faith is continually shaped and reshaped.”

“I really like those discussions. They help me grow intellectually, and also prompt me to ask questions about my religion, my faith,” she said. “It’s an evolving process. I think most of the challenges I’ve had about my faith here have come from the classroom. And I actually really appreciate that, because it’s a learning environment.”

Has her faith deepened at all during her time at Williams?

“I think it has. Overall, it’s just made me more curious about my faith. At home before, I just accepted it as a given,” she said. “Promoting curiousity, I think that’s what Williams has done for me.”


•Lauren Bloch (Jewish)•

Lauren Bloch, from Atlanta, majored in theater and religion, with a concentration in Jewish Studies.

She was active in the Jewish community growing up, and her father was a cantor in their Reform  synagogue. She has thought about eventually becoming a rabbi, but this is not an immediate plan.

Lauren has been very involved in Jewish Association since coming to Williams and served as one of its co-presidents during parts of her junior and senior years.

What does it mean to her to have faith?

“I guess it’s believing that there’s something like bigger than us that you can rely on when everything goes wrong — when you think everything in your life is falling apart,” she said. “You can still know that there is something that will help you get past it, through it.”

Williams students represent many different strands of Judaism. “There are so many different ways to observe and to be raised as a Jew in this country,” Lauren said.

The Williams Jewish community is very small but also very active and supportive. Yet, adjusting to it can present a challenge, she said.

“It’s hard sometimes to let go of your old ways, the ways you grew up doing certain things and observing certain holidays, and embracing the ‘Williams way,’ ” she said. “This by the way, changes every year with whoever is on campus. Students really do formulate what it means to be Jewish at Williams, the nature of the Jewish community.”

All of the events the Jewish Association sponsors are open to the entire campus, she said. “We often get students to come to our events who are not necessarily even Jewish but who really love the atmosphere of the community that we provide.”

This year, the Jewish Association held an interfaith event with the Williams College Christian Fellowship and talked about the Torah portion, or reading, for the week.

“We had discussion groups and we paired off after Shabbat dinner one night,” she said. “And that was a really great thing to do.”

Lauren noted that given her concentration in Jewish studies, she has encountered her faith at Williams both as a religious being and as an academic and intellectual experience.

“My relationship to Judaism has grown and matured and I’ve questioned things that I never questioned before I came to Williams. I’ve embraced things that I never embraced before I came to Williams,” she said. “It’s opened my eyes in a lot of ways.”

•Stella N. Onochie (Roman Catholic)•

Stella Onochie, from Lake City, Texas, majored in English, with a concentration in Africana studies. She was treasurer of the Williams Catholic student organization and co-music leader during campus Masses.

What does it mean to her to have faith?

“For me, it’s like everything. For my family, it’s the way we see things, the way we get through a lot of the things that we have to go through, like hardships and stuff,” she said.

Stella came to Williams as a pre-freshman while still a senior in high school, and her fellow Catholic students were very supportive, she said.

The Newman Center on campus is located in the basement of Thompson Memorial Chapel. Since Fr. Gary Caster became the Catholic chaplain in 2007, “we’ve really grown in the sense that more people know where the space is. Over the course of the day more and more people are coming in.

“They’re looking at the chapel, they’re using the computers or they’re cooking in the kitchen, and it’s just really wonderful,” she said.

The Listserve for Williams Catholic has about 300 people on it, including townspeople. At the first Easter Mass held on campus during her time at Williams, “It felt like Thompson Chapel was almost full. It was mostly students. Our largest Mass before that was probably about 50 people.”

Stella and other Catholic students have frequent positive interactions with students of other faiths, including joint service activities, she said.

However, the way some fellow students perceive Catholicism can be an issue, though. Some people are intolerant of what they think the Catholic Church is, she said.

“And when you actually start talking to them you find out that a lot
of the things they believe the church does are not even true,” she said. “So in that sense, Williams people are actually more open one you start explaining, ‘No, no this isn’t the church. That’s like a fabrication of what people think the church is.’ ”

Stella is a creative writer who recently received a fellowship for creative writing and will be traveling to Nigeria, Kenya and Mexico after graduation. Her father is from Nigeria.

“I’m hoping that when I go to Nigeria, I might be able to live with religious sisters, or another religious group, and volunteer with them,” she said. “A lot of my writing comes from the Catholic perspective — I hope like Flannery O’Connor, but I’m not there yet.”

•Sarah Hill (Episcopalian)•

Sarah Hill grew up in Connecticut until the she was high-school age and then moved to St. Albans, England. She majored in art history and practice. She was also in the pre-med program and pursued a concentration in Africana studies.

“To me faith means having a way to center myself and to put things in perspective, a way to interact with people,” she said.

During high school, Sarah went every Sunday to St. Albans Cathedral in England, a historic and very beautiful church.

“I found it to be a really inspiring place. There’s a lot of different types of clergy and a lot of different types of people who went to the church,” she said.

This inspiration did not carry over to Williams for her first couple of years, and attending church was not a priority for her.

The Feast, however, helped replace what she missed about St. Albans. This is a weekly gathering open to all students led by the Rev. Rick Spalding, chaplain to the college, on Sunday nights at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Park Street. Loosely associated wtih Episcopalianism, the Feast is “basically centered around the idea of radical hospitality.”

“I just started going regularly last year,” Sarah said. “I found that it was a really nice way to take myself out of my other stresses, my normal routine, and kind of recenter myself.”

The students eat a meal prepared by Spalding and then gather around and reflect on a poem and a Scripture reading and pray.

“I also enjoyed an interfaith discussion I had with people of varying faiths, a panel for the board of trustees, which was really interesting,” she said. “It was the first time I’ve ever spoken about my faith in front of people. So it was kind of strange to be defined by that, because I normally think of myself as being defined as an athlete or an artist or a scientist or a friend or something but not by my faith.”

Otherwise, in fact, her religious faith “is just something I bring to other places. I don’t discuss it.”

What does she think the proper role is for religion in civil society?

“For me, my beliefs would form how I participate in civil society, but I would never want it to dictate or be the heading under which I operate,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to be acting as a Christian. I’d rather just be acting as myself informed by my Christian beliefs.”

•Hanlon Kelley (Buddhist)•

Hanlon Kelley, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, majored in religion. For her, faith isn’t about belief in a particular doctrine or teaching.

“It’s more about a conviction that there’s more to the world than meets the eye, more to the world than can be empirically verified,” she said. “There are truths about human nature and about the universe that science doesn’t express. Religions express them in various ways.

“I identify as Zen Buddhist because Buddhism’s way of expressing these truths makes the most sense to me, and I think growing up with Buddhist teachings (my Dad started taking me to his Zen center when I was 9 or 10) has done much to shape my worldview,” she added. “But I also see much beauty in other
religions’ ways of expressing truths and have also learned a good deal from them.”

Hanlon praised Williams’ chaplains and Muslim religious advisor, whom she had come to know during her time at the college. “All four are good-natured, wise, open-minded and committed to the students.”

She did, however, encounter challenges to observing her faith at Williams.

“For most of my Williams career, there has not been a Buddhist community on campus, at least not a visible one. There’s a group  called the Meditation Society, which I’m now the leader of, but it’s not  explicitly Buddhist and most of the people who come to meditate aren’t Buddhist,” she said. “At least it’s better than nothing. Recently, though, a Buddhist priest moved to the area and a Buddhist campus group is just starting up, so I’m excited about the possibilities there.”

Among her interfaith experiences on campus, Hanlon in January went on a Winter Study trip to Jerusalem led by Cantor Bob Scherr, the Jewish chaplain at Williams.

“That taught me more about others’ religions than any other single class or experience that I’ve had at Williams,” she said. “It was an amazing opportunity, and I will be forever grateful to Cantor Bob and the school for providing it.”

Hanlon also attended a couple of Shabbat services at the Jewish Religious Center at Williams, which welcomes students of all faith backgrounds.

“The experiences that taught me about others’ faiths also helped me see the truths that those faiths express and helped me learn from them,” she said. “I’d say that now my spiritual outlook, while still primarily informed by Buddhism, also incorporates elements of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.” 

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