Anyone who talks to a DePauw University admissions counselor knows that the cultural diversity of the student body is a major selling point. But cultural diversity does not equate to religious diversity at DePauw.
According to the Common Data Set for the spring 2014 semester, of the 2,252 students at DePauw, 30 percent, or 730 students, identify as a race other than Caucasian. But of the 2,252 students at DePauw, Kate Smanik, director of the Center for Spiritual Life, estimates that less than five percent of DePauw’s students, between 75 and 100 individuals, profess a faith other than Christianity. That number is further divided between Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Unitarian Universalist traditions. The other 95 percent adhere to a Christian denomination or are non-religious. 
“I think that we’re really lucky to have a religiously diverse campus,” Smanik said. “[But] I think that it’s not religiously diverse enough.”
Data regarding students’ religious identities is collected when students apply to DePauw; however, applicants are not required to provide that information, so an exact count for each religious tradition is not available. Current data does suggest that fewer than 25 students make up each non-Christian community at DePauw. Religious minority groups of such a small size are not uncommon, but they cannot provide all the answers about a religious tradition.
“Our minority religious communities are tiny,” Smanik said. “They’re really small, and it’s a heavy weight to carry to be the representative of your entire tradition everywhere you go.”
The Interfaith Intern program aims to offer each religious tradition on campus a representative.
Junior and lead interfaith intern Alex Alfonso links DePauw’ssmall non-Christian populations to the lack of worship spaces and communities for non-Christians near campus.
“It’s hard to attract students of different faiths to come to DePauw because we really don’t have a lot of religious infrastructure for anything outside of a lot of the Christian denominations,” Alfonso said.
The closest synagogues to DePauw University are nearly an hour away in Terre Haute Ind., Bloomington, Ind. or Indianapolis. The closest mosque is in Plainfield, Ind., and Hindu students can find a temple in Indianapolis. Buddhist students would have to trek all the way to Fort Wayne, Ind. to find a temple.
Alfonso thinks the university should do more to attract students of different religious traditions to campus.
“I think having a plethora of religious traditions on campus adds to the spice of student life and ideas at school,” Alfonso said. “It just makes things a lot more interesting when you get a lot more perspectives on the world.”
For Muhammad Sarib Harroon, a Muslim student at DePauw, not having a mosque close by is not as big a challenge as is worshipping in a culture almost completely devoid of Islam. Observant Muslims like Haroon pray five times daily at specific times throughout the day. A Muslim prayer involves laying out a prayer rug and movements between standing, kneeling and prostrating, as well as spoken Arabic. Such a scene is not common in American culture, and even less common at DePauw where Haroon estimates only about 10 Muslims live.
“It doesn’t help me concentrate on my prayer if I’m thinking about how people are going to react,” Haroon said. “It’s just a little awkward.”
From time to time, Haroon will pray in public, but he often returns to his dorm or goes to the Center for Spiritual Life to pray.
Certain aspects of DePauw’s culture may also keep non-Christians away from DePauw. For example, most DePauw students take part in greek life, creating a social scene that includes copious amounts of alcohol. This atmosphere can be unappealing to students who are devout in a religion that bans alcohol consumption.
“The social life revolves around fraternities, so I think that aspect keeps a lot of Muslim students from coming [to DePauw],” Haroon said. “They just don’t know how to adapt socially because it is a very different culture.”
Dietary restrictions can also make DePauw a difficult place to live for devout students outside of mainstream Christianity.
“There’s nothing really that our school could do if someone was very observant [of religious dietary restrictions,” Alfonso said.
The Center for Spiritual Life works to solve these issues by giving students of any tradition a space to gather and worship.
“It’s important because some people don’t have a space to worship,” said Noam Rose, the Jewish interfaith intern. “It offers a nice place to worship, and it’s quiet.”
Events held at the Center for Spiritual Life are open to everyone and offer students of different backgrounds a chance to come together and learn from each other.
Although the minority religious communities are small, Haroon sees DePauw as a religiously diverse place.
“You have people from different pockets of religion,” Haroon said. “You can find people.”
For Smanik, teaching students to have meaningful interfaith dialogue is a must because the world outside of DePauw is religiously diverse.
“If you are adept at talking about religion and talking across religious lines, whatever those might be,” Smanik said, “and if you have had experience with people from other faith traditions, that’s going to give you an edge in your community.”
Most recently, Smanik organized Faith Week to put a spotlight on the different faith-based events on campus. The interfaith interns lead a discussion on womens role in the different religious traditions, and the Compton Center interns spoke about how religious beliefs influence social justice. The Center for Spiritual Life also hosted a dinner and discussion with artist Nancy Katz, a Jewish artist who makes Jewish prayer shawls and Torah covers from painted silk.
The biggest barrier Smanik sees to interfaith discussion is a lack of interest in dialogue. According to Smanik, American college campuses have fostered a secular atmosphere in the last 50 years that labels religion as something outside of academia and confined it to a “box we call the Center for Spiritual Life.”
“The truth, I think, is that our religious values permeate everything we do,” Smanik said, “and our conversations around religion don’t have to be contentious…and when we bottle it up and box it up, we lose a really rich dynamic of who we are as people and what we want out of life.”