As an alumna of WSU, I would like to direct this letter to those students who believe that the recent controversy about the use of the WSU chapel is, as a Kansas City Star writer put it, a “tempest in a teapot.”
Members of the alumni community can care about this issue and at the same time support the change of the chapel to make it a more flexible, more inclusive and better-utilized space.
If in the end and into the future the place is not normally used by one faith to the exclusion of others, the donors’ intent will have been satisfied and the university community will have achieved something good.
The concern I have is not so much with the changes made but with the response to the alumni who raised those concerns. The implication by some writers is that they are prejudiced, selfish, antiquated, ignorant or hateful.
Muslims and Christians are being killed for their faith, and Grace Chapel, a place which, when built, had lovely pews and artifacts particular to Christian use, has been changed. The changes may be constitutionally required, fitting with the donors’ intent, and beneficial for use as a chapel, mosque, synagogue and temple.
But the change is no less meaningful for some than taking rugs from a mosque or scrolls from a synagogue would be for others. And it comes at a time when some of the classes that once formed the core of a liberal arts education, such as western civilization, seem under siege or neglected. In this context, why wouldn’t some in the larger community be saddened and alarmed that they are dismissed or belittled for caring about the chapel that is no more?
Perhaps the first “interfaith” and heartening lesson we have learned from this controversy is that at least two groups cared very much about their faith. One is the Muslim students who wanted a place to pray and another is the group of alumni who expressed concern.
To neither group was the change a small thing. To both it meant something.
If we understand that and give their individual members the benefit of the doubt and assume they are acting in good faith, willing to share the space in spirit as well as in deed, then we will have a start toward fulfilling its purpose.
— Carroll Hoke, WSU alumna, ‘84