Secular Student Alliance eMpirical No. 46: On Discrimination, Past and Present
August 2010
In this issue:
- Introduction
- Revamped Service: Secular Student Alliance Flyer Exchange
- Clever Response: Open Letter to Vandals
- In Defense of Discrimination: A Criticism of the CLS v. Martinez Ruling
- No Discrimination Allowed: A Campus Organizer's Defense of the CLS v. Martinez Ruling
- Letter from Joe Foley, New Secular Student Alliance Board Chair
- Featured Speaker: Ellery Schempp
- Iacoviello Wins $1,000 American Atheists Scholarship
Save yourself some clicking and read the all-on-one-page version of this month's eMpirical.
| The SSA only exists because of your support. Please donate today.  To what extent should secular students join interfaith groups and be on interfaith panels? This is the debate question for eMpirical issue 47. If you are interested in writing either side of this question, contact us at enews@secularstudents.org  Take action with the Secular Coalition! Tell your representative to stand up for fact-based education! Support the Secular Student Alliance while you go. Book travel through our travel gateway. Buy your books (and other gear) through Amazon to support the Secular Student Alliance! Contact us! Call us toll free at 1-877-842-9474. You can also email us at ssa@secularstudents.org. We are always happy to hear from you and answer any questions or concerns! eMpirical Team Content Manager: Frank Bellamy Editors: August E. Brunsman IV, Ait Chapel, Amanda Knief, Lyz Liddell, Hemant Mehta, Luis A. Morán Morales Communications Director: Jesse Galef |  IntroductionMany of you have faced discrimination in one form or another, but it can give some perspective to look at how others have experienced and handled it. Whether it's a recent Supreme Court case on a club's right to discriminate, a profile of someone who faced discrimination years ago, or the current challenge of vandalized flyers, you can read about it in this issue of the eMpirical! Revamped Service: Secular Student Alliance Flyer Exchange The Secular Student Alliance has always felt that one of the most valuable qualities in the student movement is the creativity and ingenuity of our students' grassroots activism. By sharing ideas with each other, our affiliated groups can only inspire more growth and more success. To that end, the SSA just revamped the Flyer Exchange so that all affiliated student groups can post and share flyers, posters, pamphlets, and other tabling supplies with each other. Check out these proven successes and share your own! Read more...Clever Response: Open Letter to Vandals After seeing his group's banner torn down and display vandalized, SFU Skeptics Vice President Jakob Liljenwall wrote this tongue-in-cheek open letter to those responsible: Read more... In Defense of Discrimination: A Criticism of the CLS v. Martinez Ruling As 21st-century Americans, we have become so obsessed with equality and diversity that we have turned "discrimination" into an identifier of pure evil. When we hear "discrimination" our minds shut down, our blood boils, and we experience an uncontrollable urge to denounce the heretic who dares to stand against our liberal values. But as atheists, freethinkers, and intelligent people in general, we should take a step back, turn our minds back on, and remember that there is a difference between discrimination in the purely procedural sense and discrimination in the morally wrong sense. by Frank BellamyRead more... No Discrimination Allowed: A Campus Organizer's Defense of the CLS v. Martinez Ruling As a campus organizer who works with small minority groups (most hated minority in America, wouldn't vote for President, yadda yadda, you've all heard the statistics), CLS's claim comes across as, at worst, a group of wannabe victims craving the legal protection to do whatever they want, at best suffering from overactive paranoia of those they want to exclude. by Lyz LiddellRead more... Letter from Joe Foley, New Secular Student Alliance Board Chair Joe Foley, new Chair of the Secular Student Alliance Board of Directors, wrote this letter to members introducing himself: Read more... Featured Speaker: Ellery Schempp Along with several other Secular Student Alliance members, I had the privilege of sitting down to breakfast with Ellery Schempp, an experience well worth getting drenched in the morning rain. Ellery didn't seem to mind our soggy conditions, which cemented my fondness for him, if his speech the evening before hadn't already. by Coltara CadyRead more... Iacoviello Wins $1,000 American Atheists Scholarship Congratulations to David Iacoviello, the 2010 American Atheists scholarship runner-up. Each year, American Atheists gives three prizes to nontheists who have distinguished themselves via their activism. While his club activism is impressive, it was through David Iacoviello's church-state separation advocacy that he ultimately distinguished himself. Read more... |
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Submitted by Jesse on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 23:32
