Pushing for major changes in its organization, the Muslim Student Association (MSA) is hoping to relocate their prayer room from Gordon Hall basement in North Quad, and to hire a part-time chaplain to oversee religious activities. With significant student leader and MSA pressure, the administration agreed to hire a chaplain for the MSA and is currently searching for a qualified candidate. "Post Sept. 11 all qualified (chaplain candidates) are rare because everyone is trying to grab them up," said Nathaniel Mays, assistant dean of Student Life and coordinator of Diversity Services.

Mays said that now throughout the country, and the world, many colleges and universities are trying to bring chaplains to their campuses.

"It's a painstaking process because everyone's trying to get the same thing we're looking for," Mays said.

Mays further stated that the search has been a difficult process, but both the president and the administration are really committed to finding a chaplain. (We need a quote from the president and/or the administration).

"We have to accommodate (the chaplain's) outside schedule and see if it'll allow him to make the commitment we want for our students," Mays said.

According to MSA member Bariza Umar '03, the club has actively participated in the selection process until this point. The administration has asked MSA members for names of people they would like to fill the position. The MSA has also been involved in the issue of relocating the prayer room.

"We sat in on one meeting with the architects planning the renovation of Usdan, which was very positive, as we now felt we were being taken seriously," Umar said. "After that, all we have are the assurances that it will be as soon as possible."

According to Umar the issue of relocating the prayer room is an especially significant one because their current location isolates them from the rest of the religious community.

"The MSA has always tried to do interfaith events, but being in a place where no one sees you or anything is alienating. When people know you're there, you can work together and create things that would otherwise not be possible," Umar said.

Umar comments that the current location is not a suitable religious atmosphere, along with 15 percent of the Brandeis community.

"The MSA is now an organization very firmly in place in the University, and having the prayer room in a basement is insulting and just exacerbates the feeling of being the other," Umar said. "With a boiler room next to us, silverfish and ants galore, and being somewhere no one ever goes is not inviting or meditative. It is nice to have some space, of course, but being the sizable and active community that we have become, it is not adequate any longer, especially with the events in the aftermath of September 11. The feeling of "otherness" is permeating Muslims all over America; we can at least stop that from happening at Brandeis."

Mays agreed by saying that the MSA's current prayer room location is "not the best of places to be" and that they would greatly benefit if they could move to a more central location.

"The idea is that there's so much to learn from being in the proximity of other people," Mays said. "The idea is that if we can put them in closer proximity then some of the religious inter-teaching can happen a lot more easily than where they are now."

Abram Sachar, the first president of Brandies, said in regards to the three chapels on campus, "No conventional approach to campus religious life seemed appropriate to this young University determined to give equal voice to each faith in and out of the classroom. From this concept, and a commitment that no religious group would hold services in the basement of another's chapel, grew the Three Chapel idea. ..."

Although the MSA prayer room is not in another religious group's chapel, the current location in a dorm basement is not one that most aptly "give(s) equal voice to each faith in and out of the classroom," Umar said.

However, currently the plans to relocate, possibly to Usdan, are not definite.

"We don't know if they're moving," Mays said. "It would be a wonderful thing for that to happen and I think the University is trying to facilitate that.