Two weeklong initiatives hope to provide Tufts students with a dose of informational services over the next few days.
Organizers of Interfaith Week are looking to promote an understanding of world religions, while Health and Human Rights Week sponsors want to draw attention to their self-titled cause.
Interfaith Week is sponsored by Pathways, an initiative at Tufts run through the Experimental College that aims to bring Jewish, Christian and Muslim students together.
"We feel that religious groups at Tufts are underappreciated and even segregated, so we wanted to encourage dialogue between both people of faith and people not of faith," said freshman Keith Hofmann, a Pathways facilitator. "We felt that it's something that needs to be discussed in an open forum for everyone."
One reason that religion has not been discussed enough is that sometimes it makes people uncomfortable, according to sophomore and Pathways facilitator Nathan Render. But he said that this shouldn't be the case.
"People are afraid of talking about God issues, but that's not really all religion's about. It's about a lot more things than just the topic of God," he said.
"There's a lot of relevance to everyday life and what you do, and how you are as an individual on the Tufts campus," Render said.
Events throughout the week will range from discussions of personal faith to religious services.
"It's a way to get some questions out about different faiths that students can get [answered] from a real person, rather than from Wikipedia," Hofmann said. "The idea is to put a face to the faiths."
Events like a cooking class and yoga class will provide a different approach and incorporate a cultural element.
Health and Human Rights Week brings together a wide range of health- and human rights-related organizations with a common passion for global justice.
"We thought that it would be a stronger week overall and would really push the envelope of these health issues that we're trying to spread around campus," senior Candis Joseph, the president of Public Health at Tufts (PHAT), said of the decision to collaborate with other groups to put on this week's events.
"We figured it would be a lot better if all of these groups on campus actually worked together," sophomore and Tufts' Physicians for Human Rights Co-Chair Adnan Alam said. "We figured if we all did our things at the same time, it would be a lot more successful in creating awareness about human rights issues."
The programming for Health and Human Rights Week kicked off with last night's lecture by T.J. Hellman, a member of Chelsea, Mass.' Green Space and Recreation Committee, who discussed Chelsea's struggle to preserve its environment. There will also be photo exhibition, a movie screening and a fundraiser, among other activities, this week.
Aside from PHAT and Physicians for Human Rights, other sponsors include the Tufts HIV/AIDS Collaborative, the Pre-Med Society, EXPOSURE, the Timmy Foundation, and the Tufts chapter of Amnesty International.
Bennett Kuhn contributed reporting to this article.
