Hi! My name is Alana Daeger and I’m an interfaith intern with the Center for Faith and Vocation here on campus. You may have seen me at my Cookies & Questions events throughout the Fall semester. If you happened to stop by, you’ve already heard my spiel. If not, here’s a brief summary of Cookies & Questions and its purpose.

I’m very passionate about interfaith cooperation, and I want to use this event as a way to promote interfaith engagement on campus. One of my big goals this year was to concentrate on educating the wider campus about the holidays and traditions of some of the minority religions that are represented on campus. Each of my Cookies & Questions events had a theme (Rosh Hashanah, Interfaith Engagement, Samhain, and Diwali) and questions that related to the theme. The questions were presented on poster boards and answered by using different colored stickers that corresponded with a religious or secular identity. Anyone who answered all the questions received an Insomnia cookie.

I’ve chosen one poster from each of the four events to show an example of the types of questions that the campus answered. These questions were answered by anyone who stopped by my table. They began by looking at a key and choosing the sticker that matched their religious or secular identity. If they did not see their identity, they were encouraged to choose a new sticker color and add it to the key. Once the participants had their stickers, they made their way through the questions, placing one sticker on each poster and finished by grabbing a cookie. The answers are anonymous, which I hope encouraged honesty and made people feel safe from any judgment.

Read more about Alana’s Fall 2021 Cookies & Questions Event here.