On, Tue., Oct. 21, a diverse group of Pace students and faculty gathered in Miller Lecture Hall to attend “Judgment Free Zone,” an event hosted by Cru, also known as Campus Crusades for Christ.

“The goal of the event was to promote awareness to the student body, to let them acknowledge that any individual no matter what race, religion, color, gender, or sexual orientation can be judged, and, thus, mistreated from that judgment,” Cru President David Phan said.

The event’s discussions were led and supplemented by a presentation, which posed various questions to the audience and offered a collection of artwork and propaganda surrounding issues such as prejudice, racism, ignorance of other cultures, and bullying.

Students and faculty were asked to consider how judgment affected them as individuals as well as a community, whether or not judgment can be a positive and not merely a negative occurrence, and what can be done in regards to how people judge and sometimes mistreat others.

It was agreed upon that judgment could be a positive action, for example, in the case of making significant life decisions. One must judge which alternatives or values are better suited to their life and goals. Constructive criticism has the potential to boost one’s self esteem and to improve one’s proficiency in a subject or skill.

However, there is no denying that judgment and abusive criticism can, and often do, lead to the ruining of relationships, antisocial behaviors, bullying, depression, prejudice, fear, and an extreme sense of superiority of some people over others.

In addition to the presentation offered by Cru, guest speaker Rachel Aviles shared her own personal story dealing with judgment as a gay student in a Christian, all-girls high school. In Aviles’s case, this judgment led to her administrators threatening to expel her from school.

Engrossed in the rhetorical questions and the reality of both the presentation and Aviles’ story, students and faculty broke from pensive silence to continue sharing opinions and commenting on the information they had heard.

Conversations began to take place, in which students considered the way they had defined judgment at the start of the event, to what details they were considering in that very moment. Discussion became animated and open, and a feeling of safety and a desire to understand one another became quite apparent in the lecture hall.

One student noted, “We need to take time out of the day and reflect. Reflect on how we are treating one another.”

In terms of what else individuals can do to cope with the issue of prejudice, the group discussed becoming involved in one’s community, educating oneself about people around him or her, learning about other cultures, and taking time for self-reflection.

Cru chose to end the evening with a quote from the Bible, specifically Matthew 7:1, which reads, “Judge not that ye be not judged.”

“I hope we planted a seed in everyone’s mind to make a change for the better in their lives, because change always starts within first,” Phan said.