As part of the Union Program Council’s Week of Welcome activities, students engaged with individuals from different religious backgrounds at the World Religions Day expo on Thursday.
The event included student groups, local groups from the community and organizations from the Kansas City area. Each group represented a different religious group or belief system.
Camila Rivera, senior in architecture and member of the UPC multicultural committee, helped coordinate the event. Rivera said this semester the committee’s goal is to focus on featuring student organizations that have been underserved in the past.
Rivera said she hoped that by holding this event, students would be able to see the similarities and differences between religions and learn about those that they may not already be familiar with.
UPC provided an incentive to encourage students to start conversation with a variety of the organizations attending. Attendees were given a “passport” to get stamped by representatives for the chance to enter a raffle.
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Carson Krehbiel, freshman in entrepreneurship, said he was glad to have the opportunity to participate in these kinds of conversations with different religions.
“We definitely have a lot of misconceptions that, living in your own background, you don’t really get exposed to, unless you try to go out and do that,” Krehbiel said. “So that’s why I came here. I’m glad that I had the chance to talk to some people; I was able to clear up some misconceptions I had.”
Victor Medina, freshman in open option, said there were a lot of religions that he hadn’t heard of before at the expo.
“What I think I got out of it was that they all have the same idea for just bringing people together; each religion was just trying to bring a community together,” Medina said.
Rivera said UPC intends to facilitate this event again in the future for students to continue learning about the religions of the world.
