Our group’s purpose for research is to examine how students on the College of Coastal Georgia’s campus feel about the representation of their religions, and determine whether the school should take action in some way regarding the representation of any certain religion on campus. Our research is based on the belief that members of any religion, including those without one, should be treated fairly by both students and staff on a college campus. However, many colleges fail to promote such an environment, with psychologists Ashmeet Oberoi and Edison Trickett declaring that “More than half of [Muslims surveyed] reported hearing people say offensive things or make jokes about Muslims at school” (354). This doesn’t extend only to Muslims, however, as those of any religion are susceptible to discrimination- sometimes especially those who don’t identify with one at all, as Caryn Riswold- a Theology professor at Illinois college- claims “religion has probably done the most to contribute to the constant and demonstrable hostility to nonreligious people in the United States” (145). If students feel that their peers and their professors don’t appreciate them because of their religion, then we have failed as an example of a diverse college- religion should never be the deciding factor in the acceptance of someone within our community, and if it becomes that, then as stated by Alyssa Rockenbach, it “establishes barriers to cooperation before students ever arrive on campus” (498). With the findings from our survey, we hope to determine how our fellow students at CCGA feel about the acceptance of their beliefs here, and encourage diversity in all activities provided on campus.

The research for this study included a 21 question Qualtrics survey which was distributed in-person at the CCGA Student Activity Center, online through the CCGA student messaging wall, and through emails from Professor McGinnis to other classes. Only students were allowed to participate, and those who appeared for the in-person survey in the Student Activity Center were provided with candy as an incentive for completing the survey. After the survey was closed, we used the “unobtrusive methods of detecting Low Quality Data” from a report by Justin DeSimone, which didn’t require modifications to our survey, were undetectable to the participants, and were simple to do (561). This mainly involved checking whether respondents entered strings of the exact same response for each question, whether gibberish was entered into text fields, and survey completion time. Due to this filtering, 10 of the 61 responses received were filtered out, leaving us with 49 usable completed surveys.

Our survey was meant to reflect the demographics of all students at CCGA, since all methods of surveying participants were centered on-campus. The results for the 49 participants’ race or ethnicity found that 69.4% of participants were White or Caucasian, 14.3% were Black or African American, 6.1% were Asian or a Pacific Islander, 6.1% were Hispanic or Latino, 0% were Native American or an American Indian, and 4.1% selected Other. Of the two participants who selected other, one wrote in Black/White and the other wrote White/Latino. As for the age grouping, 85.7% of participants were within the range of 18-24, 12.2% were 25-34, and 2% were 45-54 years of age. The gender identity of our participants was 59.2% Female, 36.7% Male, 2% Non-Binary, and 2% selected Other without writing in a response.

Our study shows a positive correlation to similar studies, stating that Christian students feel that their religion is greatly represented on campus. As Harvard's Diana Eck noted in the mid-nineties, colleges have become “microcosmos and laboratories of a new multicultural and multireligious America,” also noting that it is a challenge, but not uncommon to have Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish students all in the same rooming group (126). The Christian students at CCGA feel as though the campus is welcoming to a diversity of religions, but this is not the case on the college campuses in our research. One study by Na'ilah Suad Nasir showed that most students don't feel welcomed and accepted on campus, stating '''All of the students we talked to described (in one way or another) the burden of constantly feeling that others were judging them in terms of negative stereotypes about [their religion].'' (25). This shows that even though our survey showed great acceptance, not all campuses can relate. The reason our survey shows this large acceptance is because of our unequal representation. Well over half of our survey's participants were Christian, a logical explanation for the unrealistic findings. Another problem with this would be alot of other religions aren't equally represented throughout the campus. This is a common problem that Charles C. Haynes mentions, stating “...some other schools, especially in the rural South, continued to… promote the majority’s religion through various school-sponsored practices.” (9). Here at CCGA, we have programs that are based on Christian religious views. These programs include The Landing, Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), CONVERGE, Baptist Collegiate Ministries (BCM), and The Wesley Foundation. While these organizations can be very welcoming of students other than Christians, these students often don’t feel the same. As stated by David Dupper, students of other religions have felt “welcome to attend but uncomfortable” in these meetings (40).

As well as feeling uncomfortable with the many Christian-based clubs and organizations, minority students may feel uncomfortable on campus in other aspects. A portion of our data mentions 57.1% of atheist participants feeling a need for change on campus. This could relate to a finding from Bowman et. al where they agree that “atheists are often marginalized” on college campuses. Their reasoning is due to other students not understanding the atheist students religious views, and that could be a valid explanation for our findings (98). Looking into the school’s calendar can also give valuable information. At CCGA, the calendar seems to be based on the Christian calendar. This means that many of the recognized holidays and breaks are those relative to Christian students, making students of other religions feel isolated. This isolation of other religions is also created by artificial antagonism towards religious immigrants. According to Georgia Plessis, such artificial antagonism stems from doctrinal secularism’s inability to accommodate fervent attachment to diverse beliefs, foreign to its own. Plessis explained in other words, radical secularism and the antagonism it has created towards religion as being “dangerous” has not been helpful in making diverse minority groups feel welcome and integrated (520).

In conclusion, the findings from our survey show that the majority of people from the religions stated in the survey do feel a sense of acceptance at CCGA with an average of 80% from each religion saying that they do. The only outlier was Chrstianity that showed 100% of people from that religion do feel a sense of acceptance. This proves one of the privileges listed in Lewis Z. Schlosser’s article, Chrstian Privilege: Breaking a Sacred Taboo, which is “I can easily find academic courses and institutions that give attention only to people of my religion” (49). Even though the majority of people from every religion do feel a sense of acceptance, only 56.2% of the participants think CCGA is a good example of religious diversity with 25% disagreeing and the others being neutral. We also found that only 22.9% of the participants think should be a change at CCGA. While this percentage is low, going deeper into the data shows that over half of the agnostic and atheist participants agreed that there should be a change on the campus. In Ellen Fairchild’s article she states, “institutional customs will have to change. Calendars must be reevaluated, food services must become more responsive, and campus climate must be evaluated in an effort to assist students who find meaning in ways that do not fit the Christian norm” (9). With that being said, we do think there are limitations to our survey. One of them being that almost two-thirds of our participants were Christian which could have definitely affected our survey data. Another is the amount of participants that took our survey. Only 49 people enrolled in the survey, which we feel is not enough to truly represent how each religious group on campus feels about the topic. The lack of participants makes our specific study not generalizable to other college campuses. We’re sure more participants in our study would show different results in all areas of our data.