As children, many live under the influence of those raising them.

Whether or not parents, relatives or legal guardians have a heavy hand in providing boundaries, many shape a child’s belief system.

That is, until these children grow up and enter college.

College can provide the first experience of separation.

Not only do students detach from the only lifestyle they’ve ever known, but they can also immerse themselves in other points of view that are often vastly different from the ones they have known.

Students may find themselves questioning ideals instilled in them since childhood and exploring their political, sexual or religious options.

Five Towson students shared their unique stories, which consider the latter, along with how entering a college setting has either strengthened or altered their spirituality and beliefs.

Erisel Cruz, seventh-day Adventist

Erisel Cruz is a Seventh-day Adventist, a religion many consider limiting because it heavily discourages and prohibits commonplace practices.

Wearing jewelry, consuming alcohol and even dancing, which according to Cruz, “provokes people in a sexual way,” are all against their beliefs.

Cruz doesn’t seem to mind.

She said she embraces the manner in which she grew up, despite knowing the extent to which her parents sheltered her from the outside world. She said she enjoys the simplicity.

“I wasn’t exposed to a lot of things, which you might be surprised with since I went to a public school … but I didn’t know a lot.
Kindergartners knew about sex before I did,” she said. “And I was in sixth grade and I was like, ‘What are these words?’”

Cruz began to develop more in high school, as the social group she hung out with expanded and learned about the various ideas many learn as teenagers, including sexuality.

These were discoveries that would later greatly impact Cruz’s life.

“I heard ‘lesbian’ for the first time in high school. Whereas I never knew what a gay person was before that,” she said.

“I came home and I was like, ‘Mom, what’s gay?’ and she was like, ‘Oh, we don’t talk about that.’”

It was then that Cruz learned who she was and how she defined herself.

She identified as a bisexual before officially coming out as a lesbian toward the end of senior year of high school, but not to her church or family.

Cruz is still an active member of her church, Mount Rainier, which according to her only ‘tolerates’ the LGBT community.
She said however that they heavily encourage celibacy in a “love the sinner, not the sin” attitude.

“When you start coming to the church more regularly … they do try to pressure you into baptizing yourself, because they want salvation and that’s the only way,” she said. “I was pushing against it completely because now that I finally knew what the word ‘gay’ was … when I realized it wasn’t something that was accepted by my church, I felt almost betrayed. These were the people that raised me to be loving and kind to everyone, but they don’t accept these people. They tolerate it. But who wants to be tolerated?”

Cruz said she lashed out, often pushing people in her church and school community away in order to cope with the mental struggles she was going through.

She said she completely blew off the idea of romance and dove into her education to avoid dating.

“On one hand, I’m identifying myself as bisexual [at the time] hoping I’ll find that one guy, because I don’t want to disappoint my family members,” she said. “But at the same time, I don’t want to baptize myself because they don’t accept me for who I am.”

Cruz did eventually get baptized, accepting she could be both homosexual and a member of church.

Cruz said she remembers the exact date she chose to be baptized, April 7, and that it was a snap decision.

“I knew that God loves me no matter what, and there’s no one sin greater than the other,” she said. “I was watching other people get baptized … usually you plan it in advance … but I just shot up right after he finished praying for someone else and said to my youth member, ‘I want to be up there. Now.’”

Cruz said she’s at peace with herself now, but is still working up the courage to tell her immediate and religious family.

She has only come out to her closest church friend.“She asked me how I chose this and I said there was no way I would choose and I didn’t have an answer,” she said.
“If I had a choice, there was no way I’d be gay.

Because it’s not socially acceptable, it’s not religiously acceptable, why would I do that to myself? But I’m not going to try to pass [for straight] either, because it’d be lying to myself.” Cruz said she still does struggle with the church’s view of homosexuality, and has left several sermons crying because they continue to preach against gay marriage, and laws related it to such as Proposition eight. “The church says God will rage against these people when they come, but I don’t believe that. I believe if you try your hardest to help others in the world … and smile through any grief, God will forgive your every sin,” she said.

Waseem Pharoan, Muslim

Waseem Pharoan is a representative of the Muslim Student Association and has deep roots in Muslim culture.
He follows the practices of the five pillars of Islam and speaks Arabic. But it wasn’t always like that.

“I sort of lost Islam, especially in high school,” Pharoan said. “It didn’t carry with me, and I got tied to my American side more.”

Pharoan said what connected him to his religion again was his semi-yearly trip to the Middle East.

“I’d been going through a little roller coaster of some personal things … and then I went to Syria in 2007 and started investigated a bit more. The last three years I’ve been a Muslim.”

Syria, according to Pharoan, has an incredibly tight family system and strict principals that focus on honoring one’s parents, especially their mother, in the grandest way possible.

“In what I think lacks in [the United States] … family values isn’t there all the time,” he said. “But in Islam, the most important person … is your mother. There’s actually a saying that the second and third most important person is your mother.”

Pharoan said he’s the most Muslim member of his family. He obeys by praying five times through out the day, which is required by Islam’s zealous followers.

“It fluctuates. My dad is appreciative, but he’s really busy. When I say, ‘Oh, it’s time to pray,’ he jumps to it. But if I wouldn’t remind him, he wouldn’t do it,” he said.

Pharoan also said he respects Islam for its process of Zakat. One of the five guiding pillars of Islam is the process of giving charity, even to those who aren’t Muslim.

“It’s to anyone. If you’re not in debt, if I have extra money, even if it’s a dollar- that dollar from a poor person to another is equal to you giving $5,000,” he said.

Pharoan also takes a comparative religious course in which he examines a variety of other spiritual studies. He said that Muslims are incredibly open to studying other religions in an in-depth manner.

“I am a Muslim, but there’s so much I don’t know. Just because I declared my faith, there are many things I still liked,” he said. “Our religion in Islam tells us to investigate. You can’t be a blind Muslim. We have great respects for other texts.”

Pharoan said he treats the Bible as he would the Quran. No other books can sit on top of it and it must always be in clear view.

Pharoan said he has plans to make a trip to the Middle East soon, his last being the trip to Syria.

“I went all over there and saw it as a different world,” he said. “They ask me how my experience is in America, they know … all about American politics and America as a whole. It’s something we lack here.”

Adam Vargas, Jewish

Adam Vargas’ grandparents were conservative Hispanic Catholics who emigrated from Puerto Rico. But Vargas, a Hispanic male, is Jewish (or at least in the process of converting).

Vargas said his religious experience often seemed inconsistent and almost frightening. As a child at a Catholic Trinity school, he dealt with a bully by physically fighting with him. Instead of resolving the matter, the principal – a nun – had a rather different outcome in mind.

“At one point she got so mad with me that she threatened to pull my teeth out with a monkey wrench,” Vargus said.

Vargas said he was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder at a young age, and the incident with his principal occurred roughly near the time where he was first diagnosed.

His teachers, instead of providing him with the consideration he needed, labeled him as a troublemaker, resulting in a horrific primary school experience.

Vargas said this was one thing that drove him away from Catholicism.

“I never had a solid foundation for what religion was for me. It was never just one thing … there was just no solid belief,” he said.

Vargas opened himself more to the idea of spirituality and religion during high school and the beginning of college when he had to cope with several of his relatives’ deaths. Coming from a Hispanic culture, Vargas’ family was tight-knit; a passing was treated with great respect. Vargas began questioning certain topics related to religious faith, including the afterlife and death.

At that time, he also learned of his stepfather’s cancer. Vargas left college for a period of time to care for his stepfather, as well as his brother and sister. His stepfather’s illness only spurned and reinforced Vargas’ spiritual questioning

Vargas restructured and repaired his academic and personal life at Landmark College, a specialty school for individuals with learning disabilities.

“I was 21, still a freshman-sophomore, and no longer a traditional student,” he said. “So I was maturing at the same time, trying to find out what I want to do with myself in the future. I hit that point that I needed to find something to believe in.”

It was at this point Vargas met his girlfriend, a Jewish student under the Conservative expression.

“Being from a completely different culture than her … I realized for things to work between us and have a legitimate relationship, I had to be able to understand her on that level” he said. “And in learning to understand her on a cultural and personal level, it came hand in hand with finding faith.”

Vargas said Judaism provided responses to questions that, in his other religious experiences, had left him doubtful. His faith was not just a change made for his girlfriend.

“I’ve had people ask me that. I’ve explained to them, that’s not the case,” he said. “There were always just questions that never seemed like they were answered … the puzzles pieces just didn’t match.”

Vargas said it’s unclear when he will clearly convert, as different dominations take into account several factors and some synagogues are even closed off or unwelcoming to converters.

“For me, being in the relationship with my girlfriend … I told her it would be best for me for being with her, that I would learn on my own and learn the culture, and with the culture, would come to religion,” he said.

Vargas said his family supports his choice.

Kaitlyn Wose, non-denominational christian

Kaitlyn Wose is a drum major in the Towson University TIGER Marching Band and majors in music. She performs regularly, both solo and in groups, but doesn’t attribute that talent to herself.

“I can’t take credit myself. I have to give that credit to God,” Wose said.

Wose, raised in a non-denominational Christian household, accepted Christ as her savior at the age of seven. From then on she vowed to follow Christianity, acknowledging all past, present and future sin she may have.

“A lot of people will say ‘Well, I’m a Christian because I was born into a Christian family.’ I don’t believe that,” she said. “I believe that when you accept Christ it’s your own personal decision.”

Despite trusting in her religious beliefs, Wose said she often had a difficult time expressing them wholeheartedly, especially in high school when her friends mocked her for saying she enjoyed church.
“When you’re in high school and middle school, you want to be like your peers and you want to fit in,” she said. “That was my main concern and my mind was in the wrong place. There were people who said [they were Christians], but they were always the ‘freaks.’”

Upon leaving high school, Wose found she wanted to reaffirm herself in her religion and started by attending the Horizon Church, located conveniently at the AMC movie theater of the Towson Commons on York Road. There she discovered her true way of worship.

“Everyone gets really into the worship. They have a live band, they have a drummer, they have a guitarist … it’s definitely catered to the college-age crowd. Everyone can be there and be in the spirit,” she said.

Wose said it was God who led her to the music program at Towson. In high school she had planned to go into the medical field.
“I didn’t want to be a music major. I had all these other crazy plans … but God didn’t want me there. And I’m in love with the music program here,” she said.

Wose also participates in Campus Crusade for Christ, a group that she said worships in a similar manner to the Horizon Church, but also allows its members to discuss topics on how God affects day-to-day lifestyle and the college experience.

According to Wose, it was a big step to be confident enough in herself and her faith to join CRU, but her membership has brought her closer to those who participate in both marching band and CRU who she likely would not have formed a bond with otherwise.

“The first CRU meeting of last semester, I went by myself. I was scared to death. They’re going to think I’m a freak. I’m not going with anyone. But when I got there, I was so surprised to see how many people I know there,” she said. “That’s one thing you don’t realize, how many Christians there are on Towson’s campus.”

Wose said she’s comfortable in the new contemporary form of worship she found at Towson.

“You’re praising the same God, it doesn’t matter if it’s a piano, organ or a rock band,” she said. “You’re all moving towards the same goal, and that’s what is important.”

Yuki Yamazaki, Hindu

Yuki Yamazaki comes from a melting pot of culture.

Her parents come from two distinct backgrounds: her father is Japanese, while her mother is Malaysian. Yamazaki was raised Hindu, the religion of her mother.

Yamazaki said her mother’s religious beliefs are somewhat of a rarity, as Malaysia is an Islam-dominated nation with a small minority identifying as Indian-Hindu.

When not at school, Yamazaki lives in Lancaster, Pa.

The closest Hindu temple to Lancaster is in Philadelphia, so Yamazaki’s family had to find alternative methods to practicing in a minority Hindu setting.

“It’s very typical to have your own alter in your own house decorated to your god,” she said.

The Yamazaki’s family alter has the image of the god Vinayaka, whom Yamazaki’s family worships specifically, and lesser gods and goddesses, as well as relatives whom have passed on who the family celebrates and honors in prayer.

Yamazaki said she harbors doubts on her faith.

“I’m going through that phase, ‘Do I really believe in this?’ Yamazaki said. “Do I think Vinayaka is what I’m going to come to … or am I going to come back in another life … or reach Nirvana and see him and be part of him? I can’t say no, but I can’t say yes.”

The beliefs she does hold she relies on as a tie to her family.

“We’re the only ones here: my dad, my mom, my sister and I. The rest of the family is in Japan. It’s the one thing I can connect to them about that’s more personal than the next ‘American Idol’ singer.”

Yamazaki came to Towson with expectations of an urban, thriving lifestyle and the diversity Towson prides itself on, and turned out to be disappointed.

“I wanted to find people who could relate a little more … I tried to join the South Asian society [South Asian Student Association], but it didn’t really mesh well with what I wanted. I wanted more of a dialogue out of my group,” she said.

For example, Deepavali, also known as Diwali, is the Hindu New Year, the biggest celebration of the year.

In fall of 2009, Deepavali was during Towson’s Homecoming game.

But Towson didn’t seem to acknowledge that, according to Yamazaki, instead choosing to focus on splashing banners everywhere for the game.

Yamazaki said it was difficult to find transportation to the nearest worship temple, located an hour and a half away, since there was nothing on campus in terms of celebration.

“On Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana, they have things in the Union to celebrate, and for us I never heard one thing,” she said.

“I don’t want special treatment, but I want acknowledgement for a campus that prides themselves on their word. And not one word for my biggest holiday? I was really disappointed.”