Question: What does cult mean to you?

1) Carina Mifuel, 21, Radio and TV major:

It depends on what people perceive as a cult. I am LDS (????) and a lot of people, mainstream Christians, think that I belong to a cult. I don't think that's necessarily so. The borderline between a cult and a social phenomena comes when it's a usually a very closed circle of people and the main characteristic of a cult is when the leader or when the people involved are brainwashed into completely rejecting everything else.

2) Donald Burbano, 20, music major:

To me I believe a cult is a word which has been sort of mangled and metamorphosized by the media.
I believe a cult can be a good thing. It just depends on the person who is in the cult how seriously they choose to take themselves and to what extremes they're going to take their beliefs to.

3) John Ortiz, 24, Humanities major:

There is a lot of cults in the sense of what they believe in is not that strange but it's just the way
they think of it is not accepted by the main stream. An example would be the Illuminada that was a cult in Spain, they interpreted everything in the bible in a very sexual way...Katholosism???

4) Mark Joshua, 23, Liberal Studies major:

5) Kathey Tinsley, 22, English Literature major:

I don't know. Cult is just anything that involves serious mind control with people aren't allowed to think of their own and have the assumed given right of choice.

6) Mandy Marvin, 19, English Literature major:

I have my own brain I don't need someone to tell me , think my life for me.

7) Eric Hilario, 30+, chemistry major:

A cult are people that want an easier answer. Churches are not a cult because they require a lot more work and I think cults are inherently people that want an easier answer and they want an exclusive answer. They want to be the saved ones, you know. This is a group of 39 people out of 6 billion they are going to be saved and nobody else was? That is a little arrogant I think and there is a lot of built into it. It's being exclusive and being the one blessed.

8) Theo Ounkeo, 20, theater arts major:

I think it's very religious and I think it's crazy. I am Buddhist and, no, I don't think that's a cult. I think a cult is something dangerous, brainwashing. I mean any religion is really like brainwashing but a cult is like really brainwashing and it's dangerous. If you get people to do something that you want them to do especially if it's murder. A cult leader thinks for everybody else and they follow along what the cult leader does. And I think that is what's wrong about it. In a religion you should think for yourself and listen to what the religion is telling you but also have your own thoughts about it and go about doing it your own way.

[ Golden Gater - April 01, 1997 ]