In the spring of this year, U of T officially went forward with plans to build a multi-faith centre on the St. George campus. Slated to be built in the Koffler Centre, the three million-dollar centre will be open by November of next year, if all goes according to plan.
The decision to provide a place for students of all faiths to pray on campus has stimulated much debate about the status of religion at U of T, or any university in a country that separates its instituitions from religion.
Despite the fact that U of T identifies as a secular institution, many of its colleges have retained prominent Christian affiliations: Trinity is Anglican, St. Michael’s is Catholic, and Victoria is Methodist-United.
This apparent contradiction, combined with the construction of more prayer space, prompted Justin Trottier, a third-year student, to found the Toronto Secular Alliance campus group, to represent a segment of students that Trottier describes as “large, idle, and under-represented.” A recent Statistics Canada census estimated that forty-eight percent of our student body is non-religious, and he therefore sees the building of a multi-faith centre as exclusionary.
But according to Samson Romero, VP Campus Life at SAC, almost ten per cent of campus clubs have some religious affiliation. For religious students, the university’s distinction as an entirely secular space can become as blurry as the line between studying and living.
Every Friday, the Hart House Debates Room hosts roughly 450 Muslim students who offer up their Jumuah prayers and listen to sermons between noon and 2 p.m. Presently, there are four spaces scattered around campus designated as makeshift prayer spaces for Muslim students, who traditionally pray five times each day. The Muslim Students’ Association (MSA), one of the largest and most active student groups on campus, claims to have over 2,000 members.
“We are very fortunate to have this level of religious accommodation on campus. Nevertheless, our student body is expanding, and it is difficult for us to perform our congregational prayers when there are space and design constraints,” explained Safiyyah Ally, communications director for the MSA.
Rory Lindsay, president of the U of T Buddhist Community (UTBC), is keenly aware of the shortage of student space on campus. UTBC recently lost its office space, and holds its weekly meditations in the Wolfond Centre for Jewish Campus Life.
“It’s very nice that they let us do it, but you feel like you don’t have any place of your own to go,” he said, describing the multi-faith centre as something that would fulfill the club’s needs.
“Persons in their student years are often at a critical juncture in their lives, making many important life decisions,” said Fr. Patrick O’Dea of the Newman Centre.
Professor Michael Marrus, a member of the Governing Council and the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Chair in Holocaust Studies, believes that it is within the university’s mandate to build a multi-faith centre to facilitate discussion among different groups.
“Religious life at a university should be a bit different from religious life elsewhere. More than other institutions, we should be involved in dialogue. We should have religious leaders who explore their faith with some attention to comparative and intellectual concerns, using instruments of rationality common to us all.”
Universities across North America, however, have adopted varied positions regarding the question of religion’s role on campus, some far more in line with the Secular Alliance. York University has prevented classes from being scheduled on Jewish holidays for the past forty years, but one professor, David Noble, has protested this policy.
Noble, a Jew himself, sees York’s policy as discriminatory against students of other faiths. In protest, Noble decided to cancel classes on Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan.
Although York University justifies its policy by claiming it has a large number of Jewish students and staff, Noble estimates that only ten percent of the students are Jewish, and that far more are Muslim.
The strongest opposition to religion on a university campus, however, has come from McGill, which announced last March that it would no longer provide Muslim students with prayer space, and that the university’s status as a secular institution meant they would not provide similar space for any religious group on campus.
Since then, the MSA at McGill has claimed that the lack of space forces them to choose between their faith and education. Many student groups have spoken out against the decision and the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations has threatened a human rights complaint against the university. Without any indoor space, many Muslim students have begun praying in stairwells, empty classrooms, and even a field on campus. Winter is now approaching, and no resolution is yet in sight.
The fact that U of T is taking a different approach to the question of religion’s role on campus may stem from the fact that it has never strongly distanced itself from its historically Christian affiliations.
“[Our] version of secular has been one that says, ‘We’re not against religion, but we simply don’t have one particular religion that we endorse.’ We are neutral rather than hostile or promotional,” said professor and Governing Council member Brian Corman.
“Anyone looking for Christian prayer space would have no problem finding it; there’s always been Jewish prayer space-and then there’s everybody else, and everybody else keeps growing,” he said.
Despite U of T’s secular affiliation, religion continues to play a prominent role on campus. Whether investment in initiatives like the multi-faith centre is consistent or contradictory for the university is clearly questionable, but there is no doubt that its existence will be appreciated by many religious students-and maybe non-religious students as well. For Lindsay the space should be open to secular ideologies as well.
“I just see it as another student space that has an openness to dialogue.”
