Xanderde Vries, Contributing Photographer

During the month of April, many Muslim students, faculty and staff at the University are fasting from dawn to sundown as they celebrate Ramadan.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Muslim calendar and is often seen as a period of introspection and communal prayer. The month began on Saturday and is set to end on May 2 with the Eid al-Fitr festival. Students participating in the fast will not eat or drink from dawn to sunset. As such, they need to eat outside of traditional dining hall hours. Yale Dining worked with Muslim groups on campus to centralize special Ramadan meals in the Morse College dining hall for students celebrating the holy month of fasting.

“This first suhoor I spent with my suitemate and floormates, and it was very nice to have others there for you in that sense,” Hanan Yousuf ’25 said. “It’s definitely difficult prioritizing religion when there’s school and extracurriculars that don’t seem to end, but I’m optimistic about this month.”

Omer Bajwa, director of Muslim life in the Chaplain’s Office at Yale, worked with the Muslim Student Association and Yale Dining to facilitate meals for students.

Students can have their iftar — the fast-breaking dinner — in the Morse dining hall after sundown, and the dining hall will stay open later specifically for Ramadan. Before leaving, students can then pick up their cold breakfast in to-go containers for the next morning so they can eat their suhoor — the pre-dawn breakfast — before sunrise.

Bajwa said that students face many challenges attending Yale during Ramadan, especially with trying to manage an irregular sleep schedule while preparing for final exams and enjoying “April at Yale.” 

“There is a genuine fatigue factor that in many ways is built into the spiritual purpose of Ramadan and what you’re supposed to get out of fasting,” Bajwa said. “But Yale is a very academically rigorous place, so I want to acknowledge the challenges that our students will face.”

Huda Siddiqui ’25 said that the University should do a better job communicating with professors to make them aware of Muslim students’ schedules when it comes to exam periods. 

To account for challenges adhering to Yale’s schedule during the month-long celebration, Bajwa wrote to each of the residential college deans “to give them a friendly heads up on religious literacy” and increase their mindfulness of Muslim students’ circumstances this month. Bawja said that professors often expect students to keep performing at the same level during Ramadan.

As the most spiritually powerful time of the year for Muslims, Bajwa said, preparation for Ramadan is extremely important. Bajwa held many information sessions within the Chaplain’s Office to explain the Ramadan accommodations that were being made for students. Siddiqui was “very excited to see the Ramadan posters in the dining halls.”

Siddiqui said she is thankful that Yale has designated the Morse Dining Hall for iftar and suhoor meals, but believes that there is “much more that the University should do” to accommodate Muslim students’ needs. She said that there were particularly long lines to get food in Morse, and that she hopes the dining hall opens another section to make it easier for students to get their food after fasting all day long.

Siddiqui and Yousef also mentioned that some of the food available for the pre-dawn to-go meals was not halal — pointing specifically to the Lucky Charm cereal students were given, even though marshmallows are not halal.

Bajwa said that the cereal mistake was probably “just an oversight and mistake.” He also mentioned what “[an] amazing partner” Yale Dining was and how they want to serve and take care of the Yale Muslim community. He added that students can easily report concerns to Yale Dining and they will work to resolve the issue immediately.

“As this is the first time in over a decade that Ramadan has fully fallen in the academic calendar, everyone is re-learning how to manage and coordinate these steps,” Bajwa said. 

During this month of Ramadan, the Chaplain’s Office is hosting daily evening prayers and Bajwa is also encouraging students to cook meals together in the student kitchens in residential colleges, as other students have done in the past. Bajwa recalled the “active and lively” kitchens where pancakes, bagels and other breakfast items were cooked up by students at 3 a.m. together. 

There will be a Ramadan banquet on April 19 at the Yale Divinity School at 6 p.m. to celebrate the holy month.

The Chaplain’s Office at Yale is located on Old Campus in Bingham Hall.

Correction, April 13: A previous version of this article stated that fasting during Ramadan is celebrated from sunrise to sundown. In fact, fasting during Ramadan occurs from dawn to sundown. The article has been updated to reflect this.