This article was written by Alexandra Salazar, a member of SUNY New Paltz. Reprinted with permission from The Little Rebellion; original article here.

Two members of the Secular Student Alliance found President Danielle Kingsbury cleaning out her car to make room for the rest of the members. A three hour drive from New Paltz to Binghamton was going to be daunting and as president, Danielle wanted it to be a pleasant trip. They’d only been an official club for a few weeks but were already over budget, forcing members to open up their own wallets to fund the trip.

The Secular Student Alliance at New Paltz is only one branch of a larger Secular Student Alliance in whole. As the name suggests, it’s dedicated to supporting the community of atheists, agnostics, and other freethinkers on campus and in New Paltz, as well as the separation of church and state in the United States of America. The topics that rise are predominantly humanistic and rationalistic, with a heavy focus on science and skepticism.

This article was written by Andrew Garber, a member of Fellowship of Non-Religious Students of Indiana State University. Reprinted with Permission; original article here.

In the fall of 2010, I had no idea what a group of non-believers would talk about at a meeting.  Yet when a good friend of mine approached me with the idea to start a student organization for atheists, agnostics, secularists, free-thinkers, humanists and pastafarians, I was intrigued and excited.  We talked about why such a group was needed, and within a few weeks, we had drafted a constitution and began to form what would eventually become the Fellowship of Non-Religious Students of Indiana State University.

It didn’t take long for us to see the many advantages of aligning the group with a nationally recognized umbrella organization.  I contacted the Secular Student Alliance, who quickly came beside us to help organize and support our fledgling organization.  The SSA provided startup manuals, tabling supplies, and even a speaker board that enabled us to bring in speakers at little to no cost. 

This article was written by Drew Pruitt, a member of the Secular Student Alliance at UNLV.

It had never occurred to us to go the SSA national leadership conference. We knew about it - we'd been getting Lyz's emails for two years letting us know about it, but it never even came up as something to do. Our group is in Vegas, Ohio is a million miles away, and we all have our own summer plans. If it hadn't been for a personal email from Nick Stancato, letting us know he'd love to meet us and that he really wanted our group to be there, we would not have gone this year, either. And we would have had no clue what we'd been missing.

As it turns out, sending three of our leaders to this conference was the single best thing we've done for the group. There are a number of reasons the conference was fantastic - any one of the by itself make it worth going.