Religious Dress and the Desire for Conformity on the Hamilton Campus

Despite the predominantly secular attitudes of students at Hamilton College, there is a religious presence here. The Muslim Student Association, Hillel, and Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship are all active organizations on campus. However, very few students actively present a religious identity through their clothing. For the most part, students seem to dress within the norms of American youth culture. It is possible to make certain assumptions about people through what they wear, but for the most part gleaning some sort of religious identity without a marker is difficult. Shabana Mir’s lecture and chapter provided me with some insight on why that is the case. In her lecture she discussed how someone's  peers are the biggest influence on a person at college. In her chapter she writes “hijab facilitated personal piety precisely by limiting assimilation within mainstream culture.”

Here at Hamilton “mainstream culture” means the party scene. This kind of highly secular environment tends not to match the kind of behavior that is expected of prototypically ‘religious’ students. Visible crosses, yarmulkes, or hijabs do not conform to the secular culture at Hamilton. People who do publicly display their religious affiliation, and choose not to participate in leisure culture, come across as more religious than students who do conform to secular ways of dress, even if that is not the case. Religious students can either downplay their religious identity to fit in or choose to embrace that part of themselves at the risk of alienating their peers.