12.21.08
Posted in College Atheists, General at 7:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
It’s always difficult, whether you run a college atheist group or an off-campus local one, to get people to attend meetings. It’s even harder to keep them coming back for more.
The Secular Student Alliance’s Campus Organizer, Lyz Liddell, offers suggestions on what atheist groups can do to get bodies in the seats!
The full list (with details) is at the SSA website.
More importantly, perhaps, is Lyz’s short list of what *not* to do if you want people to attend your meetings:
Ten Sure-Fire Ways to REDUCE Meeting Attendance!
- Keep your group’s existence secret (like a closed Facebook group), and don’t tell anyone about it unless you’re absolutely, positively, 100% sure they’re an atheist.
- Don’t tell anyone when your meetings are. Make the information hard to find, like posting it only on that closed Facebook group or an unadvertised website.
- Change meeting times and places every week.
- Holding meetings at times that are unlikely to work for people (i.e., during the school day, Friday nights, early mornings on the weekends, etc.)
- Hold boring, business-only meetings that are only of interest to the officers.
- Complain at every meeting about how people don’t show up.
- Give up after only one try of an idea.
- Stick with one idea even when it doesn’t work after several attempts.
- Decide before trying anything that no solution can possibly exist that will solve the problems your group is having.
- Refuse offers of help.
Are there other reasons you don’t go to atheist gatherings?
What advice would you offer to group leaders if they want someone like you to show up at a meeting?
(via Secular Student Alliance)
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12.17.08
Posted in College Atheists at 11:00 am by Hemant Mehta
If you’re the leader of a college atheist group or an off-campus local group, you’ve almost certainly faced the daunting task of hosting a speaker and trying to make the event a success.
It’s always difficult to make sure you’ve done everything needed to plan, publicize, and put on the event.
Instead of re-inventing the wheel each time, Lyz Liddell, the Secular Student Alliance’s Campus Organizer, has put together a fantastic checklist of everything (PDF) that needs to happen before, during, and after your speaker event.
Designed for use by groups of all experience levels, the Checklist helps in every stage of planning from the first stages of brainstorming all the way through wrapping up loose ends after the event itself.
…
We used input from student groups, current and past leaders, our own staff members, and speakers from our Speakers Bureau to create this resource. The writers and editors have had years of group-running and event-planning experience between them; they’ve made plenty of mistakes and learned lots of tricks. Now we’re able to share that knowledge with you so that you can put on the best event possible!
There’s a one-page checklist version as well as a detailed version.
Hope it helps your group put on a great event!
(via Secular Student Alliance)
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12.09.08
Posted in College Atheists at 4:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
happycynic wants to start an atheist group at his college.
The atheists he knows are a mixture of militant and not-so-offensive. Some people are agnostics, some are skeptics, some are Pastafarians.
Not everyone has the same agenda. Some want to debate. Some want to actively promote non-theism. Some just a group for the social aspects.
In an email, he asks the question:
Do you have any advice for making a successful atheist student group? How do you get a group of people as diverse as atheists and other skeptics to work together? Advice would be nice 
The first piece of advice: Read the revised and updated Secular Student Alliance Group Running Guide. It’s an excellent resource (I know it’s full of useful advice: I helped edit it).
If you’ve been part of a campus or off-campus atheist group, what did you enjoy about it? What should happycynic be doing?
What would it take for you to become a member of an atheist group?
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11.17.08
Posted in College Atheists at 11:00 am by Hemant Mehta
Reader Samuel is a leader of the Agnostic & Atheist Student Association (AgASA) at the University of California Davis.
Friday night, Dan Barker — author of Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists — spoke to the group. It was a successful event and Samuel is facing a wonderful problem:
… Through our efforts to advertise the event, we expected maybe about 150 people to show up. However, the 500-seat capacity lecture hall was almost filled on Friday night! We’ll be having our club’s weekly meeting this Thursday, and I’m definitely expecting many more people to show up than usual. I’m expecting the new audience to consist mostly of fellow non-theists, but judging by the unhappy faces I had seen during Barker’s event, I won’t be surprised to see a good number of theists in the meeting, too.
How can I best present this meeting such that this new audience will continue to come to future meetings?
What would you advise Samuel to talk about?
Since the audience will be mostly non-religious, I would suggest discussing what the atheists can do to change stereotypes about them on campus and in the community. That may involve a forum with other religious leaders. That could include publicity “stunts” that explain what atheists think and why they think it. That could involve doing charity work with or without other religious groups. If Christians are present at the meeting, they would be helping both sides by being honest about their own views of atheists: How can any incorrect beliefs be changed? Can they be changed at all? Would the Christians on campus be willing to dialogue about their beliefs?
More than anything, don’t hide your atheism. The others are guests at your meeting.
If they came to be a part of the conversation, include them.
If they came to learn about atheism, enlighten them.
If they came to convert and preach instead of listen, they’re not worth your group’s time.
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11.13.08
Posted in College Atheists, General at 8:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
Last year, I wrote about an anonymous girl who became an atheist while she was a student at (evangelical Christian) Wheaton College.
She has since graduated.
One of the people she met along her journey is writing a book about student culture at Wheaton and he has an entire chapter about our anonymous girl.
The draft chapter can be found here (PDF).
It’s especially insightful for Christians who claim to desire open dialogue about faith, but in reality make our anonymous friend feel shitty about having serious doubts.
What would you ask the anonymous girl now that she has graduated?
(via Conversation at the Edge)
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11.10.08
Posted in College Atheists, General at 6:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
I’m speaking at a couple schools in Illinois over the next couple weeks. Consider this a heads up:
I’ll be at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL on Wednesday, November 12th at 7:00 p.m. More information can be found here.
Also, I’ll be at Elmhurst College on Tuesday, November 18th. More information on that event coming soon!
Anyone who comes to my events gets a big hug and a free infant.
…
While I’m on the topic of talks, Dan Barker, author of Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists, will be speaking at the University of California - Santa Barbara this Wednesday (Nov. 12th) at 6:00 p.m. The sponsoring group is Scientific Understanding and Reason Enrichment (SURE) and more information on the event can be found here!
(Thanks to Sam for the link!)
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Posted in College Atheists, General, Humor at 6:00 am by Hemant Mehta
Best Facebook group status ever:
Two people left the group…?
What will the group’s creator do now?!
JT has an interesting way of putting it:
I wonder if that’s anything like swallowing Jesus at communion only to throw him up fifteen minutes later.
(via DisComforting Ignorance)
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10.31.08
Posted in College Atheists, General at 7:00 am by Hemant Mehta
The Boise State Secular Student Alliance were manning a booth for their group during a recent Parent and Family Weekend. Lloyd Lowe, the president of the group, set up the table and walked away for a while. When he returned, his found that the banner he had put up was no longer visible to the public:
Upon returning, he found his banner taped upside down. While trying to reposition it, he was approached by Brian MacDonald, director of New Student and Family Programs. MacDonald told him to speak with Director of Student Activities Kelly Stevens.
“This was an event for parents and families to come and just relax and enjoy family weekend, not engage in dialogue about religion and spirituality,” MacDonald said. “Something that is a very sensitive topic to some people, we thought that the poster should be taken down.”
Stevens informed Lowe that she had received complaints regarding the banner and that he must replace the banner or leave…
What is on the banner that got everyone so worked up?
You can see it on the front page of the university’s student newspaper (PDF):
The banner reads: “Outgrown Your Imaginary Friend?”
That’s it. Everyone was up in arms over the harmless question.
It’s not inflammatory at all. Yes, Lowe is calling God imaginary. As we all should. I would guess that most religious students on campus believe the same thing about all the other gods people believe in except their own.
So why is the atheist group getting punished for saying what everyone else is thinking?
The Boise State campus group is calling censorship.
Lowe writes the following in a letter to the editor:
Our banner, which appealed to reason, offended the superstitious beliefs of some people on campus. Just as their superstitious beliefs offend our sensibility and reason. When the non-religious complain about the blatant acts of proselytizing on campus they are dismissed. But when we attempt to promote critical thinking our views are suppressed. There is something wrong with this. Why is religion allowed a free pass at criticizing other beliefs (and non-beliefs) and yet immune from criticism itself?
Looking at this only in terms of religion masks a larger issue about the role of skepticism in general. We never referred to any one imaginary friend in particular. There are many and they are normally associated with childhood, like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. But there are many false beliefs held by adults who should know better. Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, UFOs, ghosts, guardian angels, numerology, psychics, and this paper even has horoscopes!
So the message I’m getting is that reason and critical thought are out, but millennia old superstitions are in. If god really didn’t want us out there asking questions I’m sure he could have handled the situation. Even Thor could have mustered a little lightning bolt. The BSU administration really didn’t have to get involved.
We are a group of students who embrace rational reasoning and empirical evidence over superstition, which we find to be just plain silly in this enlightened era. Please don’t take us back to medieval times, where the majority religion quashed and silenced other religious practices.
Perhaps it is exaggerating to say the banner takedown is a throwback to medieval times. But it is bad precendence for the school to follow. Let’s use some common sense. The banner was asking a question designed to get people thinking. A university, of all places, ought to encourage that.
On a side note, a poll on the newspaper website asks: “Do you believe the Secular Student Alliance had a right to display their banner?”
One option reads “They have a right to display their banner at any event they’re invited to on campus.”
That option is currently ahead (with 76% of the vote as I write this). You can help make sure it stays that way.
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10.22.08
Posted in College Atheists, General at 2:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
Oh, atheist bake sales, how I love you.
This one is from the campus group at the University of California, Irvine:
Cookies cost $0.50.
Or the price of your soul.
… you can pay the traditional way by giving us 50 cents for a baked good. However, if you are feeling more adventurous you can sign one of our soul contracts and transfer ownership to [Atheists, Agnostics, and Rationalists]. In return you will get 1 very tasty cookie.
I guess I’ll have to pay the cash.
(AAR is an affiliate of the Secular Student Alliance.)
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10.08.08
Posted in College Atheists, General at 4:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
The Secular Coalition for America wants to know what you’re doing to get out the secular vote in America:
They are looking for both individual and group activities that are promoting the visibility and issues of our constituency for possible media coverage.
The Coalition is most interested in the swing states, which include Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, Nevada, and Missouri. However, if you have a great story from a “red” or “blue” state the Coalition would like to hear from you too.
By sharing these stories, you can help the Secular Coalition for America show politicians and the media that they cannot afford to ignore the votes and values of atheists, humanists, agnostics, Brights, freethinkers and other secular Americans.
Your party affiliation does not matter here. They’re just concerned with what you are doing to get secular voters organized and visible.
Further information is here.
There is also time to submit your Secular Values Voter Video!
In the meantime, reader Bjorn has created these nifty (and, I must say, slightly creepy) partisan buttons for anyone who may want one:
Want one? Will you wear it proudly?!
Will you promise not to make fun of the picture of me that he used?!
Let me know
(Via the Secular Student Alliance)
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