Teachings are a means, not an end, in and of themselves, according to the writing of Thich Nhat Hanh.

“Every now and again I’ll read a book that really just hits the nail on the head,” said Andrew Severin, president of Freethinkers Alliance for Tolerance and Ethics and graduate student in biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology-Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Severin organized the alliance last semester in hopes of finding like-minded people on campus to discuss issues like culture and diversity freely and openly. He found the reading by Tich Nhat Hanh interesting and meaningful for discussion at the organization.

“There are morals and there are concepts throughout all religions and even in fiction novels and parables that we can take home and incorporate into our lives,” Severin said. “That’s an important idea that we need to get across.”

The main goal of the alliance “is to build relationships between people” by learning to accept people’s differences. Severin said the connections a person makes with another individual are an important aspect of life. The alliance allows students to openly discuss varying aspects of cultures and diversity.

“To allow your individual faith or culture to get in the way with that really limits what you experience in life,” Severin said.

The alliance works with other organizations on campus to join in helping the alliance sponsor events. In doing this, Severin said, he hopes to bring different groups together that normally do not get a chance to discuss issues and their different points of view.

In the past, the alliance has helped coordinate events such as Speak!, a program designed to spark dialogue on issues on Iowa State’s campus such as race, politics and religion. The alliance will also be working with a sociology class to promote a multicultural event.

The alliance is a fairly new organization on campus. Severin had the idea for the alliance last year, but the group started establishing itself this spring semester.

“It was something I felt that was missing here at Iowa State. It was something a lot of people could really benefit from,” Severin said. “I wanted to try to find a neutral ground where we could bring those people that are of different cultures and religions together so that we could share those experiences.”

However, diversity within the The alliance organization corresponds with the demographics of Iowa.

“Diversity actually didn’t really stand out that much,” said Hannah Scott, member of the alliance and junior in sociology. “I think that it would be very open to people of different cultures coming in.”

The members of the organization share views of cultural and religious tolerance and want to find a place where they can be themselves and have open discussion, Scott said.

Multicultural Dance:

The Multicultural Dance will be held in April. The event is being organized by FATE and students from assistant professor of sociology Teresa Downing-Matibag’s sociology 219 class. The event will include a night of games and dancing for students of different cultures and ethnicities to get a chance to learn more about one another.