AS A FOURTH year, around this time of year, you tend to slip into nostalgia and start thinking about the different aspects of the University that you will sorely miss. Among these: playing around on the Lawn, watching the baseball team playing in their tight white pants and staying up with friends until four a.m. instead of doing homework. But one of the things I will miss most is going to events that open my mind to world issues I never knew about before.
It's not only that we have so many groups that bring different perspectives or different issues to the table. The fact is that behind all these different groups and issues, we have people with a personal connection passion or, a lot of times, personal experience with an issue who are thus in a unique place to explain the issue to their peers.
Such was the intent when the Bahá'í Association of the University held an event as part of the national "Denial Campaign." The campaign focused on bringing attention to the Iranian denial of higher education to those of the Bahá'í faith in Iran, an issue that has flown almost universally under the radar for quite some time now. Under Iranian law, to take the national test to qualify for university, one needs to be either Muslim, Christian, Zoroastrian, Jewish or Hindu. Since Bahá'ís do not fall into any of these categories, they do not qualify to take the test, and therefore, do not qualify to attend university.
"The National Spiritual Association has sent a couple of letters addressed to University Bahá'í student groups," Jordan Glist, president of the Bahá'í Association of the University, said. "Specifically what they asked was for us to try to raise awareness whether through events or through student papers."
The event featured two speakers, Dr. John Grayzel, the Bahá'í Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland Department of International Development and Conflict Management, and Dr. Kavian Milani, a prominent Bahá'í scholar and editor-in-chief of two Persian language Web sites. Milani was, by far, the more compelling of the two, talking about his life in Iran through the revolution and his personal experience being discriminated against, including his own exclusion from college and the kidnapping and subsequent murder of his father. While one could quite easily open a newspaper or Google the situation in Iran, hearing the personal relations and how people like Milani have been personally affected by the political situations is so much more profound.
Although not quite as gripping, Grayzel had some interesting things to say about the obligation of University students, especially, to care about this problem. According to Grayzel, one should care first about the problems in one's own backyard, the problems that personally affect each of us. The implication being that, as students in a University and individuals involved in the greater community of higher education, this is an issue we should care about.
Of course, the main question any event on world issues raises is, 'what can we do?' The program for the meeting was actually really helpful in addressing this issue. The organization had printed the names of people it would be helpful to send letters to on the back, to let students and professors know where to direct their protests.
As informative an event as this was, however, there were several questions left up in the air. The first and most pressing of these was, why are the Bahá'í being persecuted when the others of the five religious groups are not? There are several religions one feels a theocracy like Iran would persecute before the Bahá'ís -- Judaism, for example -- and it was never made entirely clear exactly why Bahá'í is seen to pose such a threat for Iran.
Hand-in-hand with this question was that of exactly how extensive the persecution of the Bahá'í in Iran is. It's clear they are blocked out of higher education, but in a presentation where references to kidnapping and murder were being made, it would have been nice to understand the extent of persecution. Several times it was hinted at that international pressure was the only thing preventing Iran from launching an all-out genocide against the Bahá'í.
Despite these minor questions, the presentation was really quite interesting and enlightening. Glist said, "I think it went very well, it was interesting, and it was pretty well attended. Professor turnout wasn't as high as we hoped, but I think those who attended got a lot out of it. So, in that sense, I think it was a success."
Although one could consider the Bahá'í event underattended, it was no more so than many of the other similar events at the University. Which, when you think about it, is a great shame. After all, if there's one thing nostalgia teaches you, it's that you should have done more when you could.
Margaret Sessa-Hawkins's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at msessahawkins@cavalierdaily.com.
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