Welcome to Willamette

Cassandra Farrin ’05 was a freshman when the two planes struck the Twin Towers. She had been at Willamette two weeks. A week earlier a friend had been struck by a car; a week later another friend was struck by a car. Both died, and Farrin was in a state of searching.

“We were in class with Professor Dave McCreery and asked him many, many questions,” the religious studies graduate says. “He had spent time in the Middle East and helped us understand the difference between media portrayals and the real Islam.”

It was Farrin’s first experience in thinking across cultures and religions, and it projected her onto a meaningful path, one that is now leading her to graduate studies in comparative religion at the University of Lancaster in Great Britain, courtesy of a Fulbright grant. She competed with more than 500 applicants for 10 spots in a Fulbright exchange program in the U.K.

So how did a young woman from the farm town of Emmett, Idaho — population 6,500 — win one of the most competitive grants in the world? She did it by working hard, of course, but also by being genuinely curious about the world.

“In my studies, I want to compare religions without simplifying, objectifying or judging,” Farrin says. “We can feel threatened by a person whose view of the world challenges our core values, we can allow fear and discomfort to create a protective barrier, or we can take a step toward greater understanding.

“With globalization there’s more border crossing,” she says. “I’m not talking about just geographical borders, but borders of ideas, cultures and religious beliefs. When you connect with ideas from a different context, you can’t argue in terms of black and white anymore. There are too many systems.”