Officials completed the renovations of the prayer room on the fourth floor of the University Student Center, according to an Instagram post from Muslim Students’ Association.
University spokesperson Julia Metjian said in January that the renovations for the musalla, or prayer room, were a combined effort between Facilities, the Multicultural Student Services Center and the Division for Student Affairs after leaders in MSA “expressed a desire” to renovate the space. Renovations for the musalla, or prayer room, which began toward the end of 2023, were completed earlier this month to include new carpet and an expanded space, responding to student calls for a larger space to accommodate more students.
The musalla’s estimated completion date was Feb. 5, but junior Mariam Mohamed, an executive board member of MSA, said staff turnover in the MSSC was a factor in the delays.
Mohamed said prior to their departure, the MSA worked closely with former MSSC Director Dustin Pickett and the center’s former graduate assistant for religious and spiritual life Robert Zayd KiaNouri-Zigmund to choose different decorations and supplies for the prayer space. She said after their departures, the renovations’ progress went on hold and when the MSSC’s former interim director Mitchell Foster arrived, Foster and other officials were not fully aware of the renovations’ status or details about the supplies.
“There were just a lot of people involved which made things very complicated and made any progress that we had made before kind of go back,” Mohamed said.
In March, former MSA President Raheel Abubakar said continuous order delays for items like prayer mats prompted him to reach out to Cassandra Lammers, the director of the student center, about possible meeting space accommodations for prayers during Ramadan. He said Lammers helped organize a meeting with himself and other University stakeholders where they designated room 433 as a temporary musalla for students to pray during Ramadan because of its large space.
Mohamed said MSA had to outsource mats from local mosques towards the beginning of the spring semester during the initial renovations. She said it was agreed upon that the MSSC and the student center would split the costs of the renovations, and MSA would send officials the web links to the needed supplies.
Mohamed said MSA had supply issues like finding a carpet retailer. She said toward the end of spring semester, Lammers said the organization could work with Georgetown Carpet, but with external factors like finals and the pro-Palestinian encampment in University Yard, meetings about the renovations were continuously postponed and progress on the musalla slowed down.
However, Mohamed said over the summer, she received an email from Lammers about officials being interested in expanding the musalla and wanted to discuss the plans with MSA, which resulted in officials breaking down a wall to make the space larger, removing the wall of room 407 in the student center and doubling the prayer room’s size.
“We had confirmation about two or three days before classes started, that the musalla is ready and that our supplies that we ordered last year were in the MSSC, so we brought that down, and all that’s left is to put those up,” Mohamed said.
Mohamed said certain items ordered before MSSC staff departures remain lost, like water absorbent mats for the wudu stations — the cleansing performed before prayer. She added that officials should renovate those stations or the same issues some people complained about like the smell of the old carpet will arise. She said while the delays in renovating the musalla were frustrating, the completed renovation was a “big win.”
“I think a lot of community members will come back to us really excited about it,” Mohamed said. “We saw in the group chats, a lot of people are really celebrating this. This is a big, very important space for our community, so for it to be somewhere that’s new and clean and spacious, I think it makes a big difference for us.”
