The SSA only exists because of your support. Please donate today. Secular shorts: Celebrate Darwin Day 2009: Stand Up For the Science of Evolution
Defend Science is encouraging everyone to support science, even against strong political and religious pressures and to recognize the impact the exploration of our natural world has had on our civilization. God Tastes Like Chicken Wants You!
John Murdock of GTLC, would like nothing more than to entertain your school with a mock religious service, including much blasphemy and comedy. Mr. Murdock has been featured in FHM, TomeOutNYC and an article in PlayGirl magazine. The show is interactive and attending with religious costumes is encouraged. Email him for more information. Recent SSA Grant Awards
The SSA offers grants to student groups to support operations and projects. Below are some projects that groups are using these grants for! Find more information and apply here. Haven't heard back about your grant application? Some applications submitted during January were not received by the grant committee. If you applied for a project grant and have gotten no response, please contact organizer@secularstudents.org.
Pastafarians at USC
"Does God Exist" Debate Dan Barker v. Kyle Butt Date: February 12, 2009 Amount Awarded: $200 Event Details
Iowa State University
Atheist & Agnostic Society "Darwin & Me" and "Darwin Made Me Do It" Date: February 12-13, 2009 Amount Awarded: $200
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! This is your eNewsletter and we are always updating and changing to fit your needs, so please let us know what you think of our new format! Email enews@secularstudents.org with any suggestions, ideas, or comments. eMpirical Team Editor-in-Chief:
Bjorn Watland Editors: Elizabeth R.A. Liddell, August E. Brunsman IV, Hemant Mehta, Jacquie Kuzma, Landon Winkler
| Introduction Depending on your hemisphere, the Summer or Winter Solstice has passed. While days get shorter, or longer, people all over the world are preparing to celebrate the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. Keep that enthusiasm going by making your organization even more successful. Lyz Liddell, Senior Campus Organizer, has provided two resources to make your events run like a well oiled machine and keep people coming back. Forget "Darwin Day," make it a Darwin Year! Be sure to check out the official Darwin Day website at www.darwinday.org.  We have heard from more than a few groups saying that they were having trouble getting people to show up to meetings. Since a lack of attendance can quickly cause a group to fade away, we put together our best advice on how to get and keep people coming to your meetings—a critical part of building up your group. 1. Have regular meetings.
You can’t expect people to show up to meetings if you don’t have regular meetings. This is the single most important factor in getting people to your meetings. Regular meetings (same time, same place, ideally every week) establish a routine for your members to plan around, build relationships with the members, and increase interest in the group. Once your members get in the habit of showing up at 7:30 on Monday night, they’ll be inclined to keep doing it. They’ll look forward to seeing one another, and they’ll get more engaged with the group’s activities. Often a stumbling block is trying to find a time that works for everyone. Sometimes you can get people to respond to an email or online poll, but oftentimes you just have to pick a time that seems like it will work for people. Once you have people (multiple individuals, not just one person) complaining that they can’t make it to the meetings, then you have enough interest that you can ask around for a time that might work better. It is usually best to switch meeting times between semesters so that everyone can plan the new time along with their new class schedule.
Also, don’t get discouraged if your first meetings are small. Stick with it (and try the ideas in the rest of this article) and your group will grow. TOP TEN WAYS TO REDUCE MEETING ATTENDANCE
1. Keep your group’s existence secret (like a closed/secret Facebook group), and don’t tell anyone about it unless you’re absolutely, positively, 100% sure they’re an atheist.
2. 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.
3. Change meeting times and places every week.
4. 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.)
5. Hold boring, business-only meetings that are only of interest to the officers.
6. Complain at every meeting about how people don’t show up.
7. Give up after only one try of an idea.
8. Stick with one idea even when it doesn’t work after several attempts.
9. Decide before trying anything that no solution can possibly exist that will solve the problems your group is having.
10. Refuse offers of help. 2. Advertise for meetings.  You’d put up flyers and chalkings for a big speaker, wouldn’t you? You’d post an event on Facebook or a Google calendar? You’d send a reminder to your email list and maybe even send a message to all your Facebook group members. You’d ask your members to bring friends. Are you doing the same thing for your meetings?
Advertising your meetings has two great results. It (1) attracts new, interested, potential members to your group, and (2) reminds your current members where and when they should show up. You don’t have to take out hundreds of dollars in ads and wallpaper your campus (except maybe for a first meeting of the year…). A handful of bright, clever, attention-grabbing flyers in high-traffic areas and places of particular interest (a hip coffee shop, the science and philosophy departments, etc.) should do the trick. You can check out our Flyer Exchange for ideas. Save yourself some time! Since your meetings should be the same time and place every week, design your flyers so that you can leave them up all semester. Then you just have to replace the ones that get covered, worn, lost or stolen! Remember these things on all your flyers: - Your group name (the full name, not just the acronym)
- A website or Facebook group (contact us for a short, clean link to your Facebook site!)
- A contact email address and/or phone number
- The date, time and place of your meetings 3. Provide Snacks Food goes a long way for college students. Providing snack mix, chips or cookies at your meetings will attract more members – especially if it’s mentioned on your advertising. You don’t have to go wild and buy pizza for everyone every meeting – a bag of chips or package of cookies should be plenty.
Some leaders complain that they don’t want to bribe people to come to their meetings. If it bothers you, consider providing snacks as a perk, a feature that makes your meetings more worth people’s time than another activity they might have gone to instead.
Other leaders think that people will show up just for the food. While someone might go freeloading to a meeting that promises free pizza, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll come to a meeting just for a few potato chips. Really. They’ll just go get a bag of chips from their dorm vending machine – it’s way less work!
Last but not least - always make sure that your meeting location is okay with you bringing food. The last thing you want to do is make a bad reputation for your group by getting in trouble!  Ideal (and not-so-ideal) Snacks -Chips, Pretzels, and the like (flavored chips are great – no dip needed)
-Cookies (especially if they’re homemade, but we dig Oreos, too)
-Snack mixes. Trail mix, Chex mix, Gardetto’s, or any of the pre-mixed munchies you can find in the grocery store.
-M&Ms. A one-pound bag is usually enough for a group, and they’re fabulously popular!
You might want to stay away from:
-Anything that requires anything more than napkins or maybe cheap paper plates
-Veggie trays. They never seem to go over well among college students.
-Meat-based food. Secular groups seem to attract a disproportionate number of vegetarians. 4. Include Activities. Your meetings are a great time to plan big events, design T-shirts and flyers, and take care of the business of running a group. But if all you’re going to do is take care of business, consider a meeting of just the officers – the rest of your members will quickly learn that they don’t need to be at such a meeting and will stop coming. You want to have something at your meetings that’s interesting to everyone.
On the other hand, don’t feel as though you can’t have any business items on your agenda! Your meetings are a great time to do some brainstorming, get feedback on an idea, or to look for volunteers to help out. We encourage you to use these times to get things done – just make sure that's not all you’re doing.
The key is to have some activity at each meeting that people are interested, engaged and/or entertained by. There are lots of ideas out there, so get creative and get going! Your members may have suggestions – listen to them and take their ideas seriously. - Discussion sessions. Throw out a topic a few days in advance and dedicate some time to exploring the ideas, or show a video clip at the meeting and discuss reactions.
- Comedy film night. Show your top ten YouTube atheist videos, the best atheist episodes of South Park, or parts of Julia Sweeney’s Letting Go of God.
- Craft night. When was the last time you made a model Flying Spaghetti Monster?
- Engage other viewpoints. Invite members of religious organizations to come to your meetings for an exchange of viewpoints to further understand one another.
- Have a speaker. You don’t need to bring an internationally-acclaimed speaker to every meeting – your university has professors who would be happy to come and present on the historical context of the gospels, the incompatibilities of various religions, or transitional fossils. Or you could bring in a leader of an off-campus group to present on how you can stay involved in freethought after graduation. There are lots of opportunities here! 5. Be respectful of your members’ time. College students have a lot of things to do. Be respectful of this fact when running your meetings. If the posted meeting time is 8 p.m., start at 8. Yes, a few latecomers will miss the beginning of your meeting, but so what? If you advertise 90-minute meetings, don't drag on for two hours. Normal meetings shouldn’t last longer than 90 minutes. Any longer than that, and people can start to feel trapped. If you’re watching a film, don’t interrupt. But on film night, make sure to have very little else going on your agenda and to start on time.
This doesn't mean that you have to turn off the lights and kick people out when the timer goes off, though. A huge aspect of any secular group is the community it fosters, and post-meeting gatherings are a great way to build those relationships. Just be sure to announce when the formal meeting is over so that people don’t feel like they’re obligated to stay when they have other things to do.
6. Get feedback.
Once you start getting people to come to your meetings, solicit some feedback from them. Try to find out why they came, what they liked and didn’t like. What would they like to see more of? You might try passing out paper surveys, a clipboard with a question at the top that people can write responses to, or other creative ideas.
And, of course, once you have that information, use it! If comedy film night was a total flop, don’t keep doing them. If everyone liked having the biology professor come speak, try to find another speaker to bring in.
7. Foster your group outside of meetings.
You can increase attendance at your meetings by fostering interest in the group outside of those meetings. Does your group have a web forum, Facebook page, discussion listserv, or other method of communication? If not, you’re missing a valuable tool for your group. Go start one up!
Then, go feed it! Post interesting videos and articles, links to your favorite blog posts from your favorite atheist blogs, links to secular news events, and info about secular events in the community or country that your members can get involved in. You probably only need a few items a week, but an active, engaged group might send out several items every day. You might even want to assign an officer the formal role of moderator of the list and have her keep the discussion moving.
With these tidbits, you’re reminding people between meetings that your group exists and that there’s plenty of reason they should stay involved. The more active a group is, the more likely people are to become engaged, and this is one easy way to show your group’s activity level.
One of our best resources to find out what works and what doesn’t is you – our student leaders! If you’ve employed a strategy that worked well, let us know about it so other groups can also use that idea. If you’ve learned a lesson of caution about something we suggest, point out the pitfalls. You can use the amazing little button below this article that says “add new comment,” or you can email Lyz(at)secualrstudents(dot)org. Read more...  by Seth Coster The modern theory of evolution is regularly a hot topic of controversy and conflict between scientific and religious circles. This February, the University of Northern Iowa Freethinkers and Inquirers (UNIFI) will be debunking some of the misconceptions surrounding this important scientific theory. In celebration of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday, UNIFI has put together a large-scale event called Darwin Week ( www.darwinweek.com) that will take place from February 9th-12th in UNI’s Maucker Student Union. Darwin Week will begin on Monday, February 9th with some introductory social events, an ice cream social, and a few games. Tuesday will feature information tables and booths in the Union, as well as an open-mic discussion on secular and religious ethics in the evening. The discussion will be co-sponsored and moderated by both UNIFI and a local church group.
 On Wednesday, display tables will be set up all day, sponsored by various academic groups and student organizations from the area. Every hour, presentations will be given by faculty from UNI departments including biology, Earth sciences, history, psychology, and English. The topics will range from introductory evolutionary theory all the way to a presentation by Dr. Hector Avalos on intelligent design. Finally, Thursday, February 12th, will be the culmination of the event. A large cake in the shape of a Darwin fish will be presented, and birthday cupcakes will be distributed. A choral group will be singing “Happy Birthday” to Darwin regularly throughout the day. The closing event of the week will be a speech by DJ Grothe, Vice President and Director of Outreach of the Center for Inquiry, Associate Editor of the journal Free Inquiry and host of the radio program and podcast, Point of Inquiry. DJ Grothe will be discussing secular and religious ethics. “UNIFI hopes that Darwin Week will bring students with curious minds to the Maucker Union who wish to know more about the theory of evolution,” said Trevor Boeckmann, one of the administrators of UNIFI. “We are really looking forward to a massive turnout,” said Nick Covington, Vice President of UNIFI. “Darwin Week is going to be huge.” Seth Coster is a dedicated member of UNIFI. He is a senior at the University of Northern Iowa and is a Business Analysis Economics major.
 by Shelley Mountjoy and Roy Roberts On Tuesday, September 9, 2008, over 700 people arrived at Virginia Commonwealth University’s (VCU) Student Commons to hear Christopher Hitchens and Frank Turek debate the existence of god. Even with limited publicity, the attendance was overwhelming; many stated they had only heard about the debate earlier that day. The room held 500. Those who decided to stay despite not making it into the main room listened to audio in two overflow rooms. The United Secular Alliance was excited to present this debate after over a year of planning. Among the lessons learned was the need to get the funding and contract paperwork started early. This alone took six months. Funding for Hitchens’ honorarium as well various event services expenses came together from direct allocations from the University Student Government to the United Secular Alliance as well as contributions from the Deans of the Honors College and College of Arts and Sciences. The contributions from the colleges were accomplished via meetings between United Secular Alliance officers and the Deans of the respective colleges. After no Christian group showed interest in co-sponsorship or finding an opponent, a VCU student independently approached members of the Christian community surrounding VCU to fund Turek's appearance.  Frank Turek is the founder and president of CrossExamined.org. He’s written two books: I Don’t have Enough Faith to be an Atheist and Legislating Morality. Turek expressed his admiration of Hitchens when the two first met earlier that evening; Turek stated he was a fan. Hitchens’ response: "The night is young." The debate opened with 10-minute statements; Turek went first as he was arguing in the affirmative. The rebuttals (15 minutes each) were followed by a 20-minute Q&A between the two opponents. Finally a few questions were selected from the audience. There was only time for about four questions from the audience. In hindsight, the audience would have likely been more interested if the debate was followed by a longer Q&A session – eliminating the questions between the two. A reception followed where those present had an opportunity to meet one of both of the opponents. While those listening in the overflow rooms had priority, the lines for each extended over an hour. Afterward, several students joined Hitchens for scotch at a nearby pub. Hitchens had to catch a plane the following morning as he was scheduled to debate Dinesh D’Souza in less than 24 hours. The debate did help in making the United Secular Alliance's name better known across the campus and as a result students and members of the community have come to our meetings throughout the semester. In a regular meeting following the debate, the group went through and directly discussed each of the points brought up by Turek since they are commonly used apologetic techniques. The debate was also covered in The Commonwealth Times, an independent student newspaper at VCU. The debate is available online. Back to Top
 by Lyz Liddell
On December 2, 2008, the Springfield Nativity Scene Committee, led by Dan Zanoza, erected a Christian nativity scene in the rotunda of the Illinois State Capitol building. The group’s stated intent is to show others that religious displays shouldn't be banned from public buildings. The project is privately funded and has the appropriate permits from the Secretary of State’s office.
The manner in which they put it up, of course, is not the issue.
The issue is the placement of a blatant religious symbol prominently in the center of a government building. The average person walking into the capitol is confronted with an apparent endorsement of Christianity by the Illinois government, thus implying that other religions – and, of course, unbelief – are inferior in the eyes of the state.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (www.ffrf.org) immediately responded by filing for a permit to put up a counter-display on the behalf of its members in the state of Illinois. The sign, identical to the display in Olympia, WA and Madison, WI, reads:
At this season of The Winter Solstice may reason prevail.
There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.
There is only our natural world.
Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.
As a member of FFRF and an Illinois resident, I volunteered to go down to Springfield, IL, to set up the display. On Monday, December 8, I packed up an easel, packing tape, a few SSA brochures and a small sign that read “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” and drove down to the capitol.
 We tried to get students involved, but between the extremely short notice and the fact that the school semester has most students cramming for exams and scrambling to finish papers, we weren’t able to get any students to help. And so, much like the photo of Dan Barker walking up the Washington capitol steps alone, I set up the Illinois sign all by my lonesome.
As I was assembling the display easel, I was approached by two separate news teams. We spoke about the intent of the sign, its wording, and our aims in putting it up in Illinois. From about the second question in, I could tell that the interviewer was more interested in the controversy (might I say, the religious people who were offended by the sign) than in the reasons we felt compelled to put the sign up in the first place. I didn’t have any particular interest in feeding their controversy, though, so I made our case quite clear, played up the successes (such as the hundreds of new members in Washington) and pointed out that most of the people who got upset over the sign also had strange ideas like a remarkable disbelief in the separation of church and state in the first place.
About halfway through that conversation, we had our encounter with the Token Angry Man. He came up as if he had been looking for us (possible, given the press releases that FFRF sent out the day before) and immediately started attacking the sign and the FFRF viewpoint. At first he asked why taxpayer money had to go to support hate speech, which I quickly told him was incorrect (both the nativity scene and the FFRF display are privately funded).
The news cameras, of course, were quite interested in the Angry Man, as he played right into their angle. He repeatedly accused the sign of being hate speech, and an inappropriate form of celebrating the solstice. I had to keep from rolling my eyes as I explained that we weren’t celebrating the solstice, that we were instead making a statement about the appropriateness of the nativity scene. His culminating statement was a dismissal of the phrase “may reason prevail,” which left me wondering if he consciously realized that it meant he was endorsing the prevalence of irrationality. I’m pretty sure he didn’t.
 Angry Man stormed off after asking who he could talk to about having the display taken down. I’m sure some poor administrative person in the Department of Physical Services had her hands full explaining that we were protected by the same right to free speech that protected his precious nativity scene.
The rest of the day went fairly uneventfully. I got the sign assembled and set up, took some photos, and noticed a few passersby already stopping to read the display. Then I packed up and ate a delicious lunch at the Holy Land Diner – no pun intended, but excellent baklava!
I spent some time considering what I would have done differently if I were to do this again. I’m sure that next time I would be better prepared to handle people like Angry Man – after all, I'm not much of a debater. Having stood in front of cameras once, I think I could express things better next time, perhaps in more “sound-byte” appropriate clips.
But the thing I would most like to ensure for next time is more of a presence. I wanted to involve stud  ents, residents of Illinois, and show that it wasn’t just one crazy person putting up a sign. With a little more notice and preparation, I think we can have a solid representation of nontheists to show the public that we are out here, and not so easily ignored. Lyz Liddell is the Senior Campus Organizer of the Secular Student Alliance, and a writer, editor, musician, handyman and barista in her spare time. Back to Top
 Madison, WI - Professor Emeritus, Department of Agronomy, University of Wisconsin – Madison
- Member of the UW Plant Breeding and Genetics program since 1983
- Professor of selection theory, quantitative/population genetics, evolutionary biology, and bioethics
- Member of the Board of Directors for the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Jim Coors received his Doctorate in Plant Breeding and Biometry at Cornell University. He’s developed and released novel corn germplasm as part of research program that involves studies of long-term selection and the domestication of corn. Jim has served in a number of professional organizations including the Board of Directors for the Crop Science Society of America (President in 2005) and the American Society of Agronomy. He is a lifetime member and serves on Board of Directors of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  Jim greatly enjoys talking about selection, both natural and artificial, and its role in evolutionary biology. Selection is, perhaps, the least understood and most abused topic by creationists, and Jim speaks to the effectiveness of selection to counter the nonsensical and anti-evolutionary concepts put forth by the Discovery Institute and others.
If you're interested in having this speaker come to your school and give a presentation, click here to fill out our online Speaker Request form. Back to Top  Richard Cimino and Christopher Smith are currently conducting research on the "new atheism," as represented by such best-selling books by Richard Dawkins ( The God Delusion), Christopher Hitchens ( god is Not Great), Sam Harris ( The End of Faith) and Daniel Dennett ( Breaking the Spell), and Bill Maher's film Religulous. They are interested in discovering how atheists, freethinkers and secular humanists views on these books and film. This research will be used in writing a chapter on the new atheism for a forthcoming book on this topic to be published by Brill. They will not use participants' real names or share any personal information (such as e-mail addresses). They would greatly appreciate it if you could take a few minutes and provide some of your thoughts on the new atheism. Partial answers are acceptable.  Thank you for your consideration and interest. Please respond via e-mail (copy & paste the survey below) by February 15th. Richard Cimino and Christopher Smith, New School for Social Research cimir315@newschool.edu chris_schmitt4@yahoo.com Questions about the new atheism 1) Have you read the books by the so-called "new atheists"? Which ones?  2) Which is your favorite? Why? 3) Which is your least favorite? Why? 4) Has reading these books or watching such a film as "Religulous" changed your views or understandings of atheism? (Yes/No) 5) If so, in what ways have your own views changed? 6) Has the fact that these books are best-sellers and are widely featured in the media (and on-line) given you a greater sense of acceptance or support in society? (Yes/No) 7) Do you think reading these books and/or watching this film has changed theists views and ideas about atheism and atheists in a more favorable or less favorable direction?  a) More favorable b) Less favorable c) No change 8) Because of these books/films and their popular reception, are you more likely or less likely to say you are an atheist? Or has there been no change? a) More likely b) Less likely? c) No change 9) If you answered "less likely" in the last question, is there another designation you have used to describe your views since the "new atheist" phenomenon started? If so, what is this designation? 10) Have you recommended these books to friends, colleagues, family members who are not atheists/secular humanists? (Yes/No) 1  1) Have you noticed new people becoming involved in your particular humanist group since these books/film have been published/released? (Yes/No) 12) Has your particular humanist organization recommended or studied these books as a group? (Yes/No) 13) Does the internet inform your atheism? If so, how? 14) Has on-line blogs, forums and/ or particular websites played a role in your understanding or "practice" of atheism? How about television? 15) The media has made much of the "nasty" attitude of new atheism (causing some secular groups to distinguish themselves from 'this type of atheism' in print and on-line). Do you have any opinions on this? 16) In conclusion, how do you think these books and the film will affect the perception of atheists/secular humanists in the U.S.?  Volunteer work and community service are some of the things that the SSA encourages all its groups to take part in. A great way to do this with your group is to plan a spring break service trip, much like the one the University of Illinois Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers took in 2008. The SSA has a packet on how to organize your own spring break service trip (or a service trip anytime, for that matter!). We have a profile of the U of I’s trip , as well as guidelines and resources for planning your own, and a checklist to get you going. If this is something your group might be interested, NOW is the time to start planning! These trips require some work well in advance, and with spring break on the horizon, groups planning a service trip should get started right as the semester begins. 
One of the most popular events our groups put on is bringing a speaker to their campus. Whether the leader of the local freethought chapter or Richard Dawkins, these events always engage communities, spark discussion, educate the public and build momentum for our groups. However, we understand that planning such an event - especially for the first time - can be daunting. That's why we've developed a new resource to help your group plan its event - the Speaker Event Planning Checklist! 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. The Speaker Event Planning Checklist is a thorough, detailed list of the steps involved in bringing a speaker to your campus. New groups will appreciate the level of detail and instruction, while more experienced leaders might just use the condensed cover sheet to keep track of their planning progress. 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! |
Check out 
Roy Roberts is a senior at VCU majoring in Business Information Systems with a minor in Sociology. Roy is the co-Founder and President of the 
