{"id":14,"date":"2012-04-11T05:38:54","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T05:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ups.edu\/interfaith\/?p=14"},"modified":"2012-04-11T05:38:54","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T05:38:54","slug":"the-kickoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/interfaith\/2012\/04\/11\/the-kickoff\/","title":{"rendered":"The Kickoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

To start the year, we hosted a kickoff event in the Murray Boardroom in early September and invited many notable students, faculty, and staff, particularly those who were directly involved.\u00a0 Invitations were extended also to freshmen in particular in order to capture their interest in the idea that we could engage interfaith and community service issues as early as possible in their college careers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The purpose of the kickoff event was to help raise awareness about the White House Initiative and generate interest in the various programs that were supported by this Initiative, including several CIAC (Community Involvement and Action Center) youth programs like ETC Tutoring, Kids Can Do!, and Food Salvage; Interfaith Council; JuST (Justice and Service in Tacoma), a group dedicated to exploring issues of injustice and volunteering; and more.\u00a0 We had a few key speakers share a little bit about the program from both a professional staff\/student affairs perspective, and I spoke on behalf of the project as its main student coordinator to share\u00a0a student’s perspective.\u00a0 And I got to meet Marcus Luther, our student body president!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Signing up for clubs and service opportunities was a gleeful experience.\u00a0 Check out the proof of my excitement as I juggle a vegan wrap in the other hand:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the things I noticed about the kickoff event was that we did not have as many attendees as we hoped.\u00a0 This fact is due perhaps to any number of issues, from being busy at the beginning of the school year to not seizing the best advertising opportunities.\u00a0 This experience showed us how much we can improve in our marketing of future events and helped us to see our weaknesses in generating interest.\u00a0 Other than that, I think the event was a success!<\/p>\n

A major core component of the White House Initiative is to create a campus that better embraces religious identity.\u00a0 People should feel comfortable in their own skin and be able to name and claim their values.\u00a0 In order to implement this value at the kickoff event, I organized a photobooth where willing attendees held up signs declaring their spiritual affiliation.\u00a0 Some of us\u00a0were creative or purposefully ambiguous in\u00a0describing\u00a0our\u00a0religious leanings.\u00a0 Enjoy some of the pictures below!\u00a0 I’ve captioned them just in case they are too hard to read.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

My name is Dave and I practice Being Human!<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

My name is Gamachu and I am a Muslim.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

My name is Ian and I practice Agnostic Judaism.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

My name is Isaac and I practice "Buddish" Meditation.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

My name is Mary Krauszer and I am a pastor's kid and interfaith coordinator.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

My name is Nico and I am a Christian.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
And how could I resist throwing in some of my own heterodoxy?\u00a0<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>

My name is Rebecca and I am a heretic!<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To start the year, we hosted a kickoff event in the Murray Boardroom in early September and invited many notable students, faculty, and staff, particularly those who were directly involved.\u00a0 Invitations were extended also to freshmen in particular in order to capture their interest in the idea that we could engage interfaith and community service […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/interfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/interfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/interfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/interfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/interfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/interfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/interfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/interfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/interfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}