Although I am not religious myself, many of my friends are Christians.
I have never seen any of them needing an extra space to pray, meditate, etc.
They just pray before they eat or sleep, so I'm not sure if we really need a spiritual center for religious purposes.

Originally Posted by vpdltm

Although I am not religious myself, many of my friends are Christians.
I have never seen any of them needing an extra space to pray, meditate, etc.
They just pray before they eat or sleep, so I'm not sure if we really need a spiritual center for religious purposes.

Well, McMaster is a secular university. I don't think there is a need for a prayer room at all. It appears that the so called ~spirituality centre~ is just a buzzword for muslim prayer room.

[Removed by moderator]

If you want to work on study spaces you also need to look at hours. Its an absolute disgrace that Mac is one of the only universities without a 24/7 library. Mills opens at 12 on Sundays...seriously??

A few years ago MDL and the MSU pressured the university to make thode open 24 hrs during exam time and that was in my opinion the single biggest contribution the MSU has made in the last 5 years and the single biggest improvement to exam time study spaces that they could have made.

I would actually LOVE a spiritual/meditation centre. I'm not even religious but I would appreciate having a quite, peaceful place ON campus where I can just sit and contemplate and not have something going on around me. Libraries can never seem to offer that

Originally Posted by qamarh

I would actually LOVE a spiritual/meditation centre. I'm not even religious but I would appreciate having a quite, peaceful place ON campus where I can just sit and contemplate and not have something going on around me. Libraries can never seem to offer that

It's strange isn't it? Even though a place can be deadly quiet, it's like you can still feel people thinking all around you, clouding the air with their thoughts and stresses. If this place were to come into existence, they should take CVA's approach for some of their de-stresser gatherings and ban wifi and tech. Just a thought. Who knows what radio signals do to us as people.. in a given library there are hundreds (thousands?) of seperate radio signals from phones, access points, and other devices buzzing by your brain every second...

Originally Posted by RyanC

Why would people without a faith care about having a spiritual centre?

Would you be open to re-purpose/demolish divinity college for this spiritual space? Space is pretty limited on campus as it is...

As someone who is agnostic (former atheist), becoming increasingly spiritual and interested in religion.. I am all for the spiritual space. I benefit from spirituality and meditation. It has brought a lot of peace into my life.

I love the platform Israa.

Why would people without a faith care about having a spiritual centre?

Would you rather have them prey and do other noisy things in the library like they do now?

Would you be open to re-purpose/demolish divinity college for this spiritual space? Space is pretty limited on campus as it is...

I'm not paying for that. Just use the building as it is.

Also since when do you need to get all material in order to be all spiritual? Isn't spiritualism supposed to be free of all earthly bounds?

There's a small closet in ITB for people to use for prayer. That's more than enough space.

Originally Posted by qamarh

I would actually LOVE a spiritual/meditation centre. I'm not even religious but I would appreciate having a quite, peaceful place ON campus where I can just sit and contemplate and not have something going on around me. Libraries can never seem to offer that

MDCL Atrium.

If you think people will all be quiet in the spiritual space, you're forgetting that people will pray there. They will also probably talk there after prayers etc.

I know for a fact that group Muslim prayers are not quiet at all.

Originally Posted by Israa Ali

There are mental health campaigns in need of establishment and awareness, there are human rights movements in need of support, there are committees within the MSU that need a qualified individual to actively participate in such as the Women and Gender Equity Centre Committee, the Democratic Reform Committee, the Leadership summit for women and never mind the meetings the director would need to work on with other clubs and groups to try and address all these concerns. On top of that, we have a partnership with Hospitality Services over Bridge Café with programming in need to be held there. All that and I haven’t mentioned planning events yet, which are another challenge all on their own.

Why is all of that your problem directly? Don't we have individual clubs to deal with this stuff already? Why does the administration need to plan these events?

Originally Posted by Israa Ali

In addition, as the MSU Diversity Services Director and after numerous conversations I've had with the different faith-based groups on campus, they would really appreciate such an initiative. If there are many students on campus who wish to see this happen, think of spirituality as a fundamental aspect of their lives as students and the space can allocated, then I think this is a valuable objective to pursue.

Why do you think *the university* needs to provide this space? Wouldn't these faith-based groups be able to secure their own spaces for their spiritual meetings like CVA does?

Originally Posted by Israa Ali

The organization is in a really great financial state at the moment and returning some of the money to the students via this approach, I think is quite feasible.

Well, a better way to return some of the money to the students would be to actually lower some of those fees that MSU collects every year. Maybe the MSU needs to re-evaluate how much money they actually need versus how much money they make students pay to them every year.

Since you already have a weekly president hour in your platform, what do you think about the idea of an MSU managed website that gathers feedback from students and allows them to vote for the ideas/feedback posted by others?

I always feel that there is a terrible lack of connection between a normal student and the MSU, how are you planning to overcome that?

Originally Posted by qwerty91

Id be perfectly fine with opening a small room or something in the student center.

As for changing gym membership fees in the student budget: there are a lot of things the MSU supports that a lot of students dont use. Gym, bus-pass, radiostation, newspaper etc. Unfortunately sometimes you only get good deals when you have significant numbers. Id focus more on reducing costs. For example the HSR people clearly treat the MSU like children and are getting away with far too much.

Well no, the HSR and MSU have an understanding.. namely, that University-enrolled students are children living off the system to the extent where they don't question fees vs functionality like the HSR pass.

If you are running for a MSU president, you've gotta come up with something that will benefit the majority. Spiritual center sounds like it'll only benefit the Muslim prayers as other religions do not really require a fancy space to pray.
Also, do you really think that this "spiritual center" can be used as a place for meditation when it is open to public..?

I don't know. I have to see religious people washing their feet in filthy Mills bathrooms during the middle of the day...getting the floor soaking wet, surely something maybe better can exist? a muslim only prayer room (especially of women have to stay at the back) can't possibly, and shouldn't, exist for obvious reasons, but can't we accommodate people a little bit? There are a few ceremonial halls on campus muslims could perhaps use?

It seems a little too obvious that this "spiritual centre" is focused at getting a muslim prayer room on campus. I think we can all agree that this is not needed at all & people can pray at home. University space is limited and frankly, the focus should be on getting one of these libraries on campus to be open 24/7. It's ridiculous with midterms coming up that none of the libraries are open late. As well, I agree there is no need to support minority causes on campus as we need to look at the bigger picture and support causes that the majority of people agree upon. Even though the MSU is flawed, I'd probably vote for Brodka.

Originally Posted by TrinidadTT

It seems a little too obvious that this "spiritual centre" is focused at getting a muslim prayer room on campus. I think we can all agree that this is not needed at all & people can pray at home. University space is limited and frankly, the focus should be on getting one of these libraries on campus to be open 24/7. It's ridiculous with midterms coming up that none of the libraries are open late. As well, I agree there is no need to support minority causes on campus as we need to look at the bigger picture and support causes that the majority of people agree upon. Even though the MSU is flawed, I'd probably vote for Brodka.

Well said

Why is everyone freaking out so much over that one point in the platform? (Spiritual centre)

She already said she believes in listening to what the student body thinks is most important, and that that one thing won't take precedence over the others, especially if it doesn't turn out to be in high demand.

And spiritual isn't the same as religious... ctfd.