At a campus table in mid-October, University of Maryland Baltimore County senior Keven Guruswamy held up a photograph of his collection of Bibles, some in Tamil and others in English, to illustrate how a religiously mixed household shaped his view of interfaith cooperation. The snapshot was part of a two-day retreat for “Picturing Pluralism,” a semester-long photography and dialogue project bringing together roughly 30 students and 10 faculty and staff at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Religion News Service (RNS) reported.
Building Connection in a Diverse But Resource-Strapped Campus
Faculty interviewed by RNS describe UMBC as one of the country’s “most religiously diverse campuses.” The student culture spans multiple branches of Christianity and Islam, alongside Jewish, Sikh, and Dharmic groups. Recent student-led gatherings have ranged from a Muslim women’s fellowship and a Sikh festival to a queer Orthodox Jewish gathering and a South Asian Christian organization.
Yet the university, founded in the 1960s with an enrollment of about 13,530 students, lacks some of the religious infrastructure found on other college campuses. Matt Hoffman, director of the campus Center for Religion, Spirituality and Pluralism, noted that UMBC has no formal chapel. Different faith communities must share the same physical facilities for prayer and practice.
On Fridays, the center’s multi-use hall handles a rotating rotation of services. Muslim students roll out prayer mats and erect dividers for gender-separated prayers, Catholic students gather for rosary groups and worship music, and Jewish students prepare for Shabbat dinners. Lisa Huberman, social action engagement associate at UMBC Hillel, described the scheduling overlap as a delicate dance.
Huberman said that even in a mundane way, basic functions of existing involve constant negotiation, but she added that this also creates an opportunity to encounter difference in close proximity at UMBC.
The Timing of the Project Amid National Tensions
The photography project arrives as universities remain flashpoints for broader disputes over free speech, identity, and inclusion. Several days prior to the mid-October retreat, students held vigils on campus to remember victims of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and to protest the ensuing war in Gaza. Organizers like Huberman and Hoffman prepared for potential friction, though they ultimately framed the campus proximity as an opportunity to ask what students can actively do with such diversity.
“Picturing Pluralism” operates as a partnership between the UMBC center and Interfaith Photovoice, an organization that pairs amateur photography with structured dialogue. Joshua Polanski, Interfaith Photovoice director of engagement, and Roman R. Williams designed the framework to shift casual acquaintances into deeper relationships.
During the retreat, participants shared personal photographs. The exercise drew emotional responses, including a Palestinian-American student sharing a self-portrait regarding her identity, and second-year microbiology student Onkarpreet Kaur discussing the steel kara bracelet worn as part of her Sikh faith.
Whether these encounters yield lasting institutional change remains an open question, and organizers acknowledge that photography alone cannot eliminate campus polarization.
