Prayer at Princeton

Correction appended

In college, it is easy to adopt an attitude of "anything goes."

Many students living independently for the first time, free from the restrictions set by parents and secondary schools, take these four years to "sow their wild oats," as the expression goes.

Along with this attitude comes a pressure to experiment. In the words of comedian Lewis Black when he visited campus last year, "These are the best four years of your life. If you don't enjoy them, you're [expletive]."

In the midst of this atmosphere of revelry, there can be a tendency to lose sight of some parts of precollege life, including the religious teaching that shaped many a background. Yet there is still a significant contingent of students who manage to keep their religious faith alive — or even find religious faith for the first time — on college campuses today, including at Princeton.

So how do Princeton students, religious and nonreligious alike, reconcile this seeming tension between religion and "good, clean (COLLEGE!) fun?"

As I set out to report for this article, I expected to hear from a lot of students that college life, and Princeton life specifically, provided a great challenge to their faiths. Perhaps it was naivete, perhaps the guilt instilled in me by nine years of primary religious education and a very Catholic mother.

Surprisingly, most of the students I spoke with said that this was not the case.

For Caroline Huber '08, a member of Athletes in Action (AIA) and the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship, college has neither changed much about her social life nor presented many challenges to her faith.

"Although I'm not a big partier, I can still enjoy going out to the Street every once in a while and dancing or hanging out with friends," she said. "But we also find other ways to hang out."

Will Scharf '08, president of Jewish student organization Chabad, agreed, saying that on the whole he has found his "religious and social life to be fairly compatible."

"I'm out on the Street three to four nights a week and I haven't felt that I've had to make any trade-offs in either area," he said.

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Many students said that, far from restricting their social life, their religious involvement has actually extended it. They cited participation in Bible studies, Torah studies, study breaks and fellowship dinners as some of their favorite weekly activities.

For Amy Unterman '08, it was the sense of community and the social activities that first drew her into religious life at the Center for Jewish Life (CJL).

"I associate my extended family with religion, so coming to college and looking for community, I found that through the CJL," she said. "Then later, I became more interested in the religious aspect of the center."

The CJL has now become a major part of Unterman's campus involvement. Not only does she help on its student board, but she also is very involved in the Jewish women's organization, Neymara, and attends weekly services with Reform group Kesher.

"I was sucked in!" she jokes. "I go to Shabbat dinner every week now."

Huber and fellow AIA member Suzanne Rossi also said that while they both felt challenged occasionally by the social scene on campus, the community derived from religious student groups helped alleviate this effect.

"I definitely feel like a [religious] minority on campus, but participation in student religious groups is a huge help in gaining support and help in the minority setting," said Rossi.

"I have a great group of friends here, which makes being a [religious] minority unimportant," echoed Huber.

Still, Princeton's social scene does present significant challenges to devout students at times, and the community aspect of religious life cannot entirely mitigate this effect.

Tom Haine '08, an active member of the Catholic ministry Aquinas Institute, said that he found the Princeton social scene, especially the "hookup" scene — to be "not so cool."

Rossi said she found college life to be daunting at times, especially when she was a freshman.

"My roommates last year questioned what I believe about hot topics and made me defend my views," she said.

But in the end, both Haine and Rossi said that these challenges have only helped to strengthen their faith, rather than deter it. This is where student religious organizations are so helpful.

Many religious students also said their peers are open-minded about their religious involvement.

"When I talk to my high school friends [and I say], 'I'm going to services,' they think that's a little weird," said Unterman. "I don't feel like it's as big of a deal with people here."

As long as religious life is perceived as an extracurricular — just another activity to make time for — it doesn't tend to make waves on campus.

This indifference tends to fade when actual beliefs are debated. This phenomenon occurs most often in the most leveling and politically correct of the Princeton spheres: the classroom. Still, both religious and nonreligious students say they can find it uncomfortable.

"I'd say the challenges I have faced have been more from peers in precepts and other places who intellectually challenge my faith," said Huber.

Haine agreed that some of the biggest challenges to his faith came not from the Thursday and Saturday goings-on at some of the eating clubs, but rather from the conversations he had with his peers.

"Any doubt that other people have transfers doubt to you," he said, admitting that he has been forced to defend and rethink his beliefs numerous times since coming to Princeton.

To a certain extent, this religious debate can be natural and healthy for everyone involved.

"I think that nonreligious students only really object when they feel like people are imposing their views on them," said Jonathan Yehuda '08.

As Scharf said, the same "would be true at just about any University."

"Any place where you have people with a lot of strong beliefs, you're going to have disagreement and even in some instances, violent disapproval."

While Princeton does not witness much of the latter, the presence of superficial harmony but much underlying debate and even discomfort speaks a great deal to our conception of tolerance in the Princeton community. Religion is fine when viewed as another extracurricular activity that some do and some don't, but it's more contentious when it breaks out of that separate sphere.

This compartmentalization of creed resolves many of the questions surrounding the issue of religion. It removes religion from the sphere of public debate. It prevents those who do not want to deal with it from having to. It allows those who want to practice it to do so without feeling uncomfortable or ostracized.

But is this the appropriate way to "handle" religion? Can religion really be thus removed from a community? Perhaps not.

Religions, after all, consist of beliefs and decisions — ones that more often than not influence other beliefs and decisions in a community — and as such, if they are treated more openly and not sidelined, that may be the best chance to create a diverse and liberal society at Princeton.

Correction

The Jewish student organization Chabad was mischaracterized in the original version of this article. It is not affiliated with any specific observance-defined denomination of Judaisim.