Dina: I think there is a lot of stigma attached sometimes, when religions become politicized that you have to take a side and therefore you can't overlook that initial impasse, and get beyond just whom the other person is. So you have political pressures.

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Tanjila: There are obstacles because when you are involved in a faith-based organization on campus, that organization usually keeps to themselves and you are enclosed in that community. There have been opportunities now where there has been interfaith interaction but I think there needs to be more so. And I think it would be great if these religious organizations on campus would actually make more effort to reach out to one another more often and engage in group activities where they can learn from one another

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Brie: I think the biggest obstacle is meeting each other, figuring out that there are other people who are as interested as you in making something meaningful happen. So I think that is the major obstacle -- it is just thinking there are other people who want to do what you do, even if they approach it in a different way.

I think there is an argument to be made for having one large interfaith group and then there is an argument to be made for having smaller interfaith groups that are, that deal with either traditions, that have been in conflict with one another or traditions that have a common base, out of which you can then find common ground or at least the evolution...I am not exactly sure, I think it depends on the groups that you have if you have Muslims and Christians but not Jews, it might be more advantageous to have Muslims, Christians and Hindus so I think that depends, it is just going to happen organically for that particular group.

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Joseph: Clearly there is a lot. The Israeli Palestinian conflict is what is hot right now, so I definitely think it is in vogue right now to be pro-Palestinian so that is always difficult. I have some friends at Columbia that really, the blows get below the belt. It gets very ugly, almost to the point, it is almost parallel to the peace process. (It is) like when the peace process was sort of going well in Oslo and they were able to sort of talk and at this point the peace process is really in the toilet and the level of communication is terrible. (It's) the same thing on campus, a lot of campuses have really bad dialogue at this point. They have pro-Palestinian groups having a protest, the pro-Israel groups have a protest, you know, they each try to get more people and more publicity, more horrible slogans. You know, of course, they are always trying to compare someone to Hitler, the Nazis, which is just, of course, goes below the belt. I know at Rutgers here in New Jersey, they also have a very difficult situation. The local Jewish community gets involved and the local Arab community gets involved. It is a terrible manifestation. It is not at a good stage right now

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Daniel: Part of the problem is that it is never just casual interaction. There are stereotypes out there and people come to the table with baggage, and that to me is the wrong approach. Part of what was unique about the Sulha, part of what I like to do here when I was actually a student here at UCLA, when I worked with the black community here on campus, is find opportunities off campus to create programs that are in essence, [agenda - less] that you go to the beach for a barbecue and you eat and you drink and you dance and you go surfing. It was what happened at the Sulha, we saw people eating and dancing together and playing music, cooking, sleeping. Start with the basics, don't come in with any baggage, don't come in with an agenda and soon after you can see through the person or into a person; then begin engaging in meaningful dialogue but certainly not before you develop a friendly relationship.

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Zachariah: I guess the biggest obstacle is not necessarily something internal to campus, but it is more external conditions in the world today. I think it is impossible to pretend you can establish some interfaith dialogue without taking into consideration the extreme polarization that exists between these faiths. In the [xxx] context, you find that those tensions can spill over on campus whenever an emotional incident occurs against the Palestinians or against the Israelis. You see protests immediately rather than attempts to foster internal dialogue, which I think between students there probably isn't much tension. But I think students tend to very much internalize external conditions and I am not sure in this present environment [we can] over come that because on the same point where you want to encourage interfaith dialogue, you cannot be oblivious to what is going on in the world today and it is a very tense time.