Review: SSA's 2010 Northern California Leadership Summit
Jason Cooperrider, president of SHIFT at the University of Utah
by Jason Cooperrider
This past February, I had the pleasure of attending the Secular Student Alliance's Northern California Leadership Summit at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. It was my honor to represent SHIFT (Secular Humanism, Inquiry and Freethought), the secular student group at the University of Utah, as its president and co-founder.
Though I had heard about the leadership summit for several weeks before it occurred, I had not planned to attend, due to prior commitments I had made to my graduate program for the same weekend. However, after receiving a personal invitation from Lyz Liddell, who said she would really like to have representation there from our group, I decided that we must have a presence there, so that our group might benefit from the knowledge and ideas that would certainly be provided at the conference. Because no one else in our group was able to attend, I decided to petition my graduate program to allow me to shirk my duties in order to attend the conference, and I am very glad I did.
Austin Dacey delivers the keynote address "A Secular Calling" in the Memorial Church at Stanford University.
This was my first national event for the secular movement and it was a very rewarding experience. There was not a single talk given throughout the conference that I thought was boring or worthless. To the contrary, I found them all to be very entertaining and beneficial, such that I was able to derive some amusement and wisdom from each and every one. There were some great talks by leading national figures of the secular movement, such as Sean Faircloth from the Secular Coalition for America and Dr. Austin Dacey formerly of the United Nations. I was also highly impressed by the caliber of talks given by the student attendees, most of whom are undergraduate students.
The conference was filled with a spirit of cooperation and friendship, such that I felt comfortable with and greatly enjoyed talking with everyone present.
Students and speakers at the Northern California Leadership Summit pose for a group photo in front of the Rodin sculpture "Gates of Hell."
There was a sense of importance and of a pending revolution that would be made possible by those attending the conference and by many others just like them from around the world, such that secularism would prevail over religious dogma within the lifetimes of many who were present. I brought back with me many great ideas and suggestions that will benefit our group, some that have already been implemented and some that we intend to implement in the near future.
I am very thankful for the friendships that I forged and for the knowledge that I gained during my time at the conference. I thank the SSA for organizing the event and providing me with a travel grant to aid in the costs associated with my attendance, AHA! @ Stanford for being such wonderful hosts, and everyone involved for making the conference so successful and memorable for me. I look forward to participating in other national SSA events in the future.
Jason Cooperrider is the president and co-founder of SHIFT (Secular Humanism, Inquiry and Freethought) at the University of Utah, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in neuroscience.
Submitted by Lyz on Sat, 02/27/2010 - 11:26
