Finding time for faith on campus

Eat breakfast, study for midterms, pray to God - although not necessarily in that order.

For a large portion of Penn students, daily or weekly prayer is an integral part of their schedule.

According to associate chaplain Stephen Kocher, "On some level, the majority of Penn students and staff are engaged in some sort of prayer in a regular basis," although how they do so varies across the board.

College freshman Marwa Ibrahim agreed.

"Prayer is a time when I can be in the presence of God, ask Him all I want and thank Him for all he's given me," she wrote in an e-mail.

"It's a connection with whoever you decided is your God," said College sophomore Roger Stronach, who attends the St. Agatha-St. James Church on Chestnut Street on a regular basis.

Others, however, offer a more stringent definition.

"Prayer depends on Jesus," Wharton junior David Rice said. "It's not to say God doesn't hear prayer from people who aren't Christians yet, but he hears it out of his grace," Rice explained.

Yet from churches to synagogues to mosques to Locust Walk, people are talking with God.

"When I pray, I'm just walking down Locust Walk and the sun shines down the street and I'm like 'wow, thank you God for that,'" Wharton senior Josh Veit said.

"You know when you're little and you pray before you go to bed? I still do," Stronach said.

College junior James Katz goes to Hillel every morning; College junior Laura Winchell and Rice take the blue line to Liberti Church in Fishtown with 15 other students on Sundays.

All three, like many interviewed for this article, found that communal prayer played an important part in their social life as well.

Katz, the co-chairman of the Orthodox Community at Penn, has sat in the same spot in services since freshman year - right next to his friend College junior and Daily Pennsylvanian columnist Mordechai Treiger.

"You see the same people more or less every day, multiple times every day," explained College freshman Raquel Finkelstein, who like Katz prays two to three times a day at Hillel.

A College senior who requested her name not be printed, however, enjoys leaving University City to attend an area mosque.

"It just gets me off campus and lets me interact with other people," she said.

She said she started attending religious services more often in college because of the familiarity they provided.

It is this relationship, both personal and communal, that keeps students reaching out to their higher power.

Wrote Ibrahim, "God won't lose anything if I don't pray . I would be losing something very valuable."

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