It’s often known that college students love free food, canceled class and perhaps most popular: Netflix. And one organization on campus is seek to appeal of this love of the TV streaming service.
Better Together is an interfaith group on TCU’s campus that meets monthly to discuss “spiritual perspectives and religious traditions,” according to its website. The club is known for its Know Your Neighbor night dinners, but now, the members of Better Together are trying something different.
Students gathered in Jarvis Hall Tuesday night for Better Together’s first, ‘Only God Can Judge Me’ event. Club members and students from different organizations on campus came together to watch Aziz Ansari’s popular Neflix show, Master of None.
The episode, titled “Religion”, focuses on the main character Dev’s struggle with not being devoutly Muslim and how to break it to his parents. Students who varied religiously from Roman Catholic to Hindu discussed how their devoutness to religion affects their lives with family, friends and on campus.
Sijil Patel, a junior biology pre-med major and Better Together co-president, said Tuesday’s event was planned with a broad appeal.
“We’re watching an episode of Master of None because everyone can relate to Netlfix on some level,”Patel said. “We’re kind of just using this 20 minute episode to start the conversation that just because you’re a member of a faith doesn’t mean you adhere to every single finicky rule that your faith kind of stipulates.”
Better Together’s faculty leader and associate Chaplin of Religious and Spiritual Life, Britt Luby, said this kind of interfaith discussion between students is crucial here at TCU.
“It helps to know different people who are in your community in a safe, really safe, environment and an environment that encourages questions,” Luby said. “I think that makes you a better person, a better neighbor, a better student.”
Luby also said these interfaith discussions are important because it’s necessary to know people from one religious or cultural group are not all the same.
“The reality is there are all types of people on the [religious] spectrum,” Luby said. “I think things like tonight, will kind of open a door to a conversation about how everybody practices their own religion differently.”
Better Together wants to encourage not only its members, but students all across campus, that interfaith work can be as simple as making a new friend.
“I became a part of Better Together through my friends who actually taught me, like Sijil who taught me, about other religions,” said Blake Williams, a senior biochemistry pre-med major and Better Together co-president. “She taught me all about Islam and most of what I know is from her and I kind of knew nothing about it.”
Better Together meets every first and second Tuesday of the month.