The new year brought a new decade, New Years’ resolutions and, for Penn’s interfaith student group PRISM a host of changes that are intended to bolster its community.
One of the new measures to be debuted this semester will be the Faith Fund, an entity that will decide how to distribute funding for religion-related events. Planning for the Faith Fund was started by the previous PRISM board, chaired by College seniors Sam Adelsberg and Saara Hafeez.
Since the Student Activities Council does not fund religious groups, in the past groups would refer directly to the Office of the Chaplain in order to request funds for their events. Funds would be disbursed at the discretion of the Chaplain’s Office.
With the implementation of the Faith Fund, groups can instead fill out an application for funds and present it to the Faith Fund board, which will then decide how to allocate funds. Since the program is in its “pilot year,” according to University Chaplain Charles Howard, the PRISM board will act as the Faith Fund board for this semester.
“Even though the chaplain’s office has dealt with it well in the past … [it] does have a lot of other obligations already and this is a way to make it a more transparent process,” PRISM co-chair and Wharton sophomore Evan Schoenbach said.
A representative from the Chaplain’s Office will advise the students and help with continuity from the previous system to the new one.
PRISM co-chair and College junior Roxana Moussavian emphasized that so long as it is holding a faith-related event, any on-campus organization is welcome to apply to the Faith Fund.
In addition, the PRISM board is changing its structure.
Previously, the board consisted of co-chairs and a representative from each of PRISM’s member organizations: the Newman Council, Hillel, the Muslim Students Association and the Hindu Students Council/Young Jains of America.
The new board structure consists of two co-chairs, a vice-chair and education, advocacy, finance and communications chairs, along with a programming tri-chair and representatives from each group.
The inaugural board was chosen from members of the religious community, but the current co-chairs hope to institute elections for the next board.
With the new board structure, “there’s a board of people that are on PRISM … whose sole interest is to strengthen the interfaith community,” Moussavian said.
PRISM is broadening its scope from its previous four groups. There are some new groups in talks to potentially join PRISM, Schoenbach said.
PRISM will also start to hold public monthly general body meetings, which it hadn’t previously done.
Howard said the aim is to move from a multi-faith community to an interfaith community. “It’s easy to have a place where there are multiple faiths … every world faith is represented here, but having those groups in conversation, dialogue, working together and becoming neighbors to each other — that’s interfaith.”
