Muslims push back against Middlebury College prayer room 'eviction'

By Ted Cohen

A group of Muslim students at Middlebury College are blasting the virtual shutdown of their traditional prayer center.

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The Middlebury Muslim Student Association, along with other religious groups, will no longer be able to use the student center, school officials said.

The Muslim students have used the Crest room, located in the McCullough Student Center for weekly prayers and storing their prayer mats.

College administrators said the Crest room is transitioning from a religious space to a general-purpose center.

In addition to the association, other religious organizations including the Middlebury InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, the Newman Catholic Student Organization and the Hindu Student Association lost priority access to the space.

Religious organizations still have access to the room, but their reservations no longer get top billing.

School officials also lifted the no-shoe, no-food requirements for the Crest room, a move the association finds particularly troublesome.

Because the shoe and food restrictions were lifted, the space is no longer appropriate for Jummah prayers, according to Muslim student representatives.

"There could have been better communication between the school and all the orgs that lost access to that place," Rayhan Mahamed, association co-president, told the student paper. "We had to organize super quickly and figure out how we were going to tackle this issue."

The association sent a letter to the administration appealing to reopen the prayer center, but to no avail.

"There is no local Islamic center within 40 minutes of campus by car," the group complained. "In conversations with Jewish and Christian students, we learned that both communities have dedicated centers right here in the town of Middlebury."

The letter also emphasized the association's immense growth, explaining that weekly prayers needed a large space like the Crest Room.

A large portion of the Muslim students coming from abroad say they do not have cars, making it hard to make the trek to Burlington, according to Kai Arrowood, an editor at The Middlebury Campus.