We want to make sure that you know a few important facts about the Secular Student Alliance in time for your voice to be heard.

First, the Secular Student Alliance is a democratic* organization. Everyone who joins gets to vote on members of our Board of Directors. The Board of Directors is responsible for making sure the Alliance thrives and is true to its mission.

Late every winter we have an election for some of our Board of Directors seats. This year's voting runs from 2/22/08 through 2/29/08. There are eight people running for six seats on our Board of Directors. Terms on our Board of Directors last for two years.

We want to make sure everyone has a chance to vote. If you're a member in good standing, you'll be getting an email this week with instructions on how to vote using our website. If you're not a member in good standing, you can join or renew right now and vote in this election and have a say in how the Alliance moves forward. You can also run in the next election as all members of the Alliance are eligible to do. Of course, when you join, your membership dues support our very important work organizing atheist, agnostic, humanist, skeptic, freethinking and otherwise non-theistic students around the world.

We've also added a feature to our website, located at the top of the right column, that will tell you your current membership status and when your membership is going to need to be renewed. We hope this will help clarify any confusion you may have about the matter. You can test this feature by logging into the site.

If you'd like to join the Secular Student Alliance for the first time, you can do that in under a minute.

 *That's a small "d" on democratic. As a 501(c)(3), we can't support or oppose candidates running for public office. That has the upshot of making your membership dues tax deductible, though!