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Saving Religion on Campus

by Hannah Tharayil  
4/30/2013 / Politics

Before going off to college, coming from a devout Catholic family, I went to church every weekend, no exception. I confessed my sins every year before Christmas and Easter. My family and I prayed almost every night and prayed the rosary often. However, not even two weeks of college changed this all for me completely. By the second weekend of college I was already skipping church, maybe going about five times total my entire freshman year. I did not confess my sins before Easter. I never said the rosary while I was up here at school. What happened between my life at home and going away that caused this drastic change? The answer is college. College can really conflict with the religious lives of students, but there are so many measures the campuses should be taking in order to prevent this.
Many changes are thrust upon someone who goes off to college. First, the distance away from home and parents gives students a freedom they are often not used to having. For me personally, all of a sudden I was in control of my own religious destiny, and I was not sure what to do with that control. A Good Morning America article "Are Students Losing Their Religion on Campus?" explores the story of Ashley Parrish, who had a story similar to mine. She talks about how she was excited to get away from the bubble of home and family, and this sudden burst of freedom caused her to "go crazy". She talks about how partying and boys caused her spiritual life to suffer. She finally realized that she had lost something important: her faith. Ashley, like I, eventually found her faith again. There is no question that many other students can relate. In my case, not having my parents there to force me to go to church is why I never went. In fact, I would lie to my parents and tell them I was going because there was no way they could know if I was going to church.
All the focus spent on classwork, extracurricular activities, work, and volunteering pushes religion way down to the bottom of students' list of priorities. College is a place where students go to be successful, and in order to be successful, they put their energy and focus on getting good grades. So much pressure is put on students to keep a high GPA and be very active on campus and the community. They spend more time volunteering and participating in organizations than going to church. Many students also hold jobs in order to pay for school and have money for other things. The time spent on all these things leaves very little room in a student's schedule for worship.
Another big issue that really contributes to the problem is the social aspect of college. Students spend so much time and focus on partying and making friends that they forget about religion. Many Saturday nights are spend partying, and Sundays are spent taking care of hangovers. Partying gets in the way of going to church and also causes many college students to compromise their morals. A good number of students never had a drink before college, but that changes once they leave home and are thrust into having so much freedom. Being at college, I have personally met many people who can relate to this. My friends and I were under the impression that the only way to make friends in college was to go to parties and drink.
The movie Blue Like Jazz shows the story of a boy who really starts to question his religion as he grows up. He really starts to deviate and forget about his religion once he goes off to college. This is mainly because there are many things he disagrees with regarding the religion he grew up learning to follow. College is a place where he had more freedom to explore his intellectual side, causing his faith to change a lot. College can often be seen as a place where beliefs are challenged and a lot of intellectual exploration and uncertainty goes on. This can pose a threat to the religious beliefs of many students, as shown in Blue Like Jazz.
Studies have shown that being spiritual can actually have a positive impact on how students do in the classroom. Margarita Mooney studied this in her journal Religion, College Grades, and Satisfaction Among Students at Elite Colleges and Universities. She used two different measures of religiosity, which were attending religious services at least once a week and a 1 to 10 scale of observance of one's religious traditions and customs. She found that an increase in religiosity correlates with an increase in hours spent on academics and extracurricular activities, as well as a decrease in the time spent partying. This goes to show how important it is for students to be able to practice their faith while in college. I can attest to this myself because after rediscovering my faith my sophomore year of college, I noticed an improvement in my grades and an increase in my participation in extracurricular activities. The more I started going to church, the less time I spent partying. Based on this, I can say that allowing students like me to practice their faith can really have a positive effect on their lives. Ashley Parish, along with many other students, have had situations similar to this one.
Since students have the freedom to stop practicing religion, they obviously cannot be forced to continue their faith in college. The only thing that can be done is to make it easier to keep their religious passion. By making a few changes here and there, campuses could really help prevent religion from becoming forgotten to students. Campuses hold a large variety of students who each have their own ways of worshiping and spirituality. We need to make sure we accommodate as many students as we can in coming up with a method to solve the issue. The solution should aim towards making it easier in general for students to worship on campus. We should not be focusing on specific religions or churches. The idea is just create a more comfortable environment in which students can practice their faith in whatever way they prefer.
Many colleges do offer religious activities on campus such as bible study. However, according to the article "Navigating Religion between University and Home" by Sonya Sharma, these can bring out the social and religious differences, especially in their intensity of belief, between students of different backgrounds, which can cause some students to question their beliefs. Also, there are so many different religions on campus that it is difficult to accommodate for all of them. So holding more religious activities on campus is not the direction we should take to fix the issue. Instead, the focus should be on making it easier for students to continue with the religion they had been practicing back home. It is good to see that there is an effort, which is a good start. However, more drastic measures must be taken to properly fix the issue.

Some people argue that college has no effect on religious beliefs of college students. According to the SSRC website in their article "How Does College Affect Students' Religious Beliefs", "the religious beliefs of most college students neither increases nor decline while in college." This article argues that the broadened intellectual horizons of college do not interfere with religious outlooks of students. They say that it is a myth that college poses a threat to students' faith. However, based on personal experience and experiences of friends I can argue the opposite. This article also claims that students often pick up where their religion left off once they get out of college. This conflicts with their suggestion that college has no effect because if they have to "pick up where they left off" this suggests their religion was on hold during college, meaning they were not practicing.
We need to find a solution to this problem. We need to work together with campus officials towards preserving the spirituality of students on campus. Although this may be difficult and take a lot of time and planning, we together can find a way to make religion more accessible to college students. Colleges have a big capability to make an impact on a student's religious faith, so it is only right that they take advantage of this capability to conserve religious beliefs on campus. The freedom of being away from home, the stress and workload of school, the pressure to party and have a good social life, and the lack of transportation are just some of the factors that cause students to neglect their faith. However, there are many things that can be done on campus to make sure that the faith of students is conserved. Students could really benefit from having religion made more available to them, not only in the religious aspect of their lives, but also in their academics. We should be able to practice faith and go to college at the same time; we should not have to sacrifice one or the other.

Works Cited
"Are Students Losing Their Religion on Campus?" ABC News. ABC News Network, 06 Dec. 2005. Web. 03
Apr. 2013.
Huda. "Islamic Prayer Timings." About.com Islam. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2011
2013.
Miller, Donald. Blue like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. Nashville: T. Nelson, 2003.
Print.
Mooney, Margarita. "Religion, College Grades, And Satisfaction Among Students At Elite Colleges And
Universities." Sociology Of Religion71.2 (2010): 197-215. E-Journals. Web. 3 Apr. 2013.
Sharma, Sonya, and Mathew Guest. "Navigating Religion Between University And Home: Christian
Students' Experiences In English Universities." Social & Cultural Geography 14.1 (2013): 59-79. E-
Journals. Web. 3 Apr. 2013.
"SSRC Guide: Religious Engagement Among American Undergraduates."How does college affect
students' religious beliefs". N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2013.
William Kruskal. Journal of the American Statistical Association , Vol. 83, No. 404 (Dec., 1988), pp. 929-

I am a sophomore at North Dakota State University. Coming to college, I became interested in the affect college can have on religion. Initially, I had almost dropped my faith altogether once I started at the University. Lucky, I rediscovered my faith and now would like to help others do the same.

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