It was with listening in mind that Bartels several years ago set up a booth near the entrance of Memorial Union, to give students an easy way to meet with chaplains and to go over concerns large and small. During the past year, he and Soares have been sharing the booth, with Bartels taking the Thursday afternoon spot noon to 2 p.m., and Soares taking Thursday mornings from 10 a.m. to noon. It is, both men agree, important to allow students that kind of space where a student of any faith can feel safe and free to talk about any issue of faith, be it personal or general. For as Episcopal Bishop Geralyn Wolf put it recently at the chaplaincy forum, a college chaplain's primary responsibility is to men and women between the ages of 17 and 25 who are trying to sort everything out. Listening is important, she said, because students at a secular university don't always see many places on their campus where they express their deepest spiritual concerns.
Soares takes the same view.
We need to be able to show the student there is a place they can go to, that they can find people on campus who care. Still, other approaches can be used too. Guy Bermel, URI's Jewish chaplain, thinks it's difficult to sell any organized denomination or religion to a typical university student. Well consider this. This spring URI Hillel put on a Passover Chocolate Seder.