According to the Oregon Constitution, state money cannot be used to fund religious activities, but the Muslim Student Association celebration Eid Al-Adha and MEChA’s Dia de los Muertos — two events funded by the ASUO Programs Finance Committee — have strong religious roots.
Members of student government and student programs have questioned PFC’s use of viewpoint neutrality when allocating money during this year’s hearings, and some have criticized PFC for careless use of the terms “religious” and “cultural” when allocating money to MSA. The debate is not unique to this year, as questions have also come up in the past for MSA and the Jewish Student Union, suggesting the criteria PFC uses to distinguish between “religious” and “cultural” may be as blurry as the two intertwining meanings of the words.
The group decides which events are religious on a case-by-case basis, PFC chairwoman Mary Elizabeth Madden said.
“There are no set guidelines,” she said. “We use common sense. If there were certain events that clearly screamed ‘religious,’ we wouldn’t fund those.”
Yet student groups’ varying interpretations of “religious events” implies the definition isn’t cut and dried.
In MSA’s Feb. 4 PFC hearing, PFC member Erin Pursell asked MSA whether Ramadan and Eid Al-Adha could be considered religious holidays, according to minutes from that night’s meeting.
An MSA member said the holidays were analogous to Christmas and Easter.
ASUO Student Senate President Peter Watts, who was at the hearing, said this statement should have set off an alarm that the event was religious.
“Even though Hanukkah and the Jewish culture are intrinsically tied, it is also a religious event. The same can be said for Christmas,” he said. “Christmas and Easter are clearly religious holidays.”
But PFC unanimously voted to fund the celebrations, despite conversations implying the events could be considered religious.
When asked what, in particular, went on in the MSA meeting, Madden admitted after spending more than 100 hours in the PFC meetings, she couldn’t remember the details. Madden said she found out the tape recorder was broken after the Feb. 4 meeting, so tapes from that night are blank.
Madden said she remembered a language barrier between PFC and MSA members, and she relied on PFC member Nadia Hasan, who is Muslim, to explain the holiday.
According to the minutes, Hasan described the holiday as “an opportunity for everyone to understand the Islamic culture.”
MSA co-director Mahmoud Abdul-Jawad said the three-day holiday takes place during the Islamic pilgrimage season. He said that MSA’s event is cultural because it is a celebration that incorporates no specific rituals or religious ceremonies.
“It wouldn’t be considered religious because there isn’t worshipping,” he said.
He added that because PFC did not define for him “religious,” he “can’t give an exact answer on that” question.
This isn’t the first year MSA’s religious affiliation was brought up. Madden said there’s been little debate in recent years, but members of the ASUO Executive in 1986 questioned using incidental fees to fund a groups that seemed unavoidably tied to religion, according to ASUO memos from January 1986. In the Jewish Student Union’s 2001 hearing, questions also arose regarding the religious implications of JSU’s program statement.
When University President Dave Frohnmayer’s office reviewed the program’s mission and goals statement, he wanted to alter the statement to represent the group’s cultural, rather than religious, principles, Executive Assistant President Dave Hubin said. The president’s office asked then-ASUO President Jay Breslow to discuss the situation with the group. The group agreed to the changes, Hubin said.
JSU co-director David Kent said that although the name “Jewish Student Union” implies the group is a religious organization, JSU focuses on the culture “Jews have created around their religion.”
“Since Jews have been separated out from Christians and Muslims, we’ve created our own culture, dance and song that may not necessarily have to do with prayer,” he said.
He used the religious holiday “Pasach” as an example of an event JSU considers cultural.
“In Israel today, you can be a very secular Jew,” he said. “You still might eat the traditional foods, and gather with your family,” he said.
But the cultural sides of Pasach can be celebrated without recognizing the religious origins of the celebration, he said.
David Jaimes, MEChA’s co-director, made a similar comment about the Catholic holiday Dia de los Muertos — a celebration of the after-death spirit.
“Mexico is primarily Catholic, but in Mexico we don’t incorporate that,” he said. “We focus on the cultural rather than the religious aspects.”