The University of Minnesota offers a wide range of religious-based organizations for students to join, providing students with the opportunity to gain community and grow in their religion.
As college students, it can be difficult to fit in time to pray or practice religion, but efforts from student groups and the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) are trying to fix that.
Hindu YUVA, which stands for Youth for Unity, Virtues and Action, is a Hindu organization on campus that is part of a larger national organization with 78 different chapters across the U.S.
The organization’s mission is to create a platform to protect, preserve, practice and promote Hindu Dharma, according to their website.
Prasannakumar Salasiya, president of Hindu YUVA UMN, said the organization meets once a week to do spiritual activities like yoga or meditation. The group also celebrates Hindu festivals, like Diwali and Holi, together.
“Individually, I can only do so much,” Salasiya said. “So it’s better to have a space where there are many students so we can exchange our views and kind of learn more about what others think.”
USG’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee is working to provide more classrooms available for prayer and meditation, according to USG President Rahma Ali.
Although there are worship spaces in and around campus, including churches for Christian students and the Al-Madinah Cultural Center in Coffman Union for Muslim students, Ali said it can be difficult for students to make it to those places to pray and worship if they are across campus or in St. Paul.
“Buildings that have spaces that are not being utilized can be utilized to allow students to these meditations and spiritual prayer spaces,” Ali said.
Ali said USG’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee contacted classroom management and visited buildings to see what rooms are not used and could be turned into prayer and meditation spaces.
“When we talk to classroom management, it’s a lot more of ‘This is a room that’s not as utilized so you’re able to use it,’” Ali said. “But we go through a process of, ‘Can we make sure that this is not labeled as a storage room anymore so other facility managers, or just facility staff, are aware that this room is now a spiritual meditation space?’”
Giving students space to pray and grow in their faith is important to students like Emily Bessler, a member of Gopher Catholic. Gopher Catholic is a student group through the St. Lawrence Catholic Church and Newman Center, located in Dinkytown.
Bessler said there are a lot of different things that go into the student organization. They have meetings every other week and Women’s and Men’s Groups that members can participate in.
As a student leader, Bessler said she can invest more in the community.
“I think that this community and being a part of Gopher Catholic has really supported me in being the person that I want to be,” Bessler said. “The women and the men that I’ve met in this community are probably some of my friends that I’ll have for the rest of my life.”
Bessler said it is important to have a worship space close to campus she can visit after a long, busy day.
“Life can get so loud and so busy and being able to just sit and pray and have no noise around is really such a blessing,” Bessler said. “So being able to have that accessible and being able to just be able to walk here is definitely very nice.”
