Institute impact — Program is prominent part of student life at U.

The halls of the Salt Lake University Institute of Religion were quiet Friday afternoon but far from empty.

Young adults lounged with laptops, iPods and textbooks on the sofa chairs arranged plentifully throughout the building. While two students discussed the war in Iraq, two others sat at a table conversing with the full-time missionaries.

Contrast that with the previous night, when three young men took the stage to perform Weezer's "Buddy Holly" with the help of the "Rock Band" video game. It was part of a fraternity- and sorority-sponsored carnival for Rush Week. Also spotted were a mechanical bull and an inflatable slide that nearly scraped the cultural hall ceiling.

Two nights later, there was a stomp. On Sunday, six stakes met throughout the institute building and the two stake centers adjacent to it, all of which constitute 31 acres on South Campus Drive.

Welcome to LDS U.

If there is one thing the student leadership and faculty at the Salt Lake University Institute are adamant in agreement upon, it's that the University of Utah can be a haven for students who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"People will tell you sometimes that the University of Utah is a place that's not really very friendly to LDS people, and that's not true," said Russel Lindsay, interchapter president for Sigma Gamma Chi, an institute-sponsored fraternity.

"If it was in the past, it's not now."

In fact, "friendly" is just the type of atmosphere that institute leaders have labored to create. Their hope is that the classy brick building with white trim, located just across the street from the Huntsman Center, represents a spiritual and social retreat for students. And by all indications, their efforts have been realized. From firesides in the chapel to fussball in the game room, the institute has become an integral part of the university experience for a significant number of LDS students on the hill.

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The interior of the institute building is like a muscled-up version of the average LDS meetinghouse, with multiple chapels, two gyms, countless bishop's offices and hallways that seem to never end.