As Zubin writes about in her blog (which everyone should read, its so well written), last week’s Wednesday was our Campus Day of Learning. Following a series of controversial events that I shan’t go into (but you can find out about if you google Bryn Mawr confederate flag) our administration decided to set a whole academic day aside to discuss these pertinent issues about prejudice and how they affect all of us.

Since I was less industrious than Zubin, I only managed to make it to one of the sessions, the one about Islamophobia. I don’t really know what I was expecting to see when I went. I knew that people I knew and was friends would be on the panel so I had a rough idea of what kind of responses they would put forward.

But, as with any discussion, exactly fifty percent of what makes it good is the audience. And with this kind of conversation at this kind of time, I remember thinking that this could really swing either way.

Thankfully, it swung in the better direction.

For starters, the event had a healthy turnout. Quita Woodward, where the event was being hosted, was full, with a pretty even split between faculty and students. And people were eagerly asking questions, polite, curious, intellectually stimulating questions.

After the usual disclaimers that their experiences were personal and that they weren’t Islamic scholars, the panel did a good job framing the issues raised, which basically means that they gave honest accounts of stuff that had happened to them, real people as opposed to what one reads in the news, what they thought of certain religious practices and trends, and the place of Islam in their lives. Through the variety of the responses they offered alone, the diversity of the muslim community not just on campus, but also internationally was pretty obvious.

Ultimately, I walked out of the event feeling that perhaps large scale conversation about religion was possible, something I didn’t realize I thought was impossible before.