In November 2011, NU SSA was able to host a Carl Sagan Day in collaboration with several other groups thanks to a Project Grant from the national SSA. This article summarizes the experiences of that event for the group.

Carl Sagan Day Chicago 2011 was an epic, inter-group collaboration held in honor of the birthday of the late and great astrophysicist and science popularizer, Carl Sagan. The cosponsoring groups involved with the event were Northwestern University’s Secular Student Alliance, the DePaul Alliance for Free Thought, Chicago Skeptics, the University of Chicago Secular Alliance, the Women Thinking Free Foundation, and of course, the national non-profit Secular Student Alliance. Funds were allocated equally among the cosponsoring groups, and the expenses covered venue rental and catering (which tongue-in-cheekily included apple pies and Cosmopolitans, in the spirit of Carl Sagan’s TV series, Cosmos, which memorably espoused the well-known quote: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”).

In December 2011, SSA at CSI was able to host David Bazan thanks to Speakers Bureau from the national SSA. This article summarizes the experiences of that event for the group.

Tommy Nugent presented his one-man show, “Preacherman” at the College of Southern Idaho on Wednesday, December 7, 2011.  Through a combination of funding through the Secular Student Alliance ($300) and our club account at CSI ($200), we were able to cover Tommy’s travel expenses ($430 airfare, $70 hotel) and bring his show to a crowd of sixty people (our best attendance for an SSA event at CSI this year!) in the CSI Fine Arts Recital Hall.

In December 2011, UM SSA was able to host David Bazan thanks to a Project Grant from the national SSA. This article summarizes the experiences of that event for the group.

The University of Mississippi SSA’s inaugural event took place on December 3^rd of this past year. The featured speaker for the event was former Christian-indie artist David Bazan, formerly known by the moniker “Pedro the Lion.” Admission to the event was free and open to the public, and we were surprised to see that many of the attendees were affiliated with religious denominations. This however came as little surprise to Bazan, who has found ways throughout the latter part of his career to earnestly express his renunciation of religious views without alienating much of his Christian fan base which supported him throughout much of his early career as Pedro the Lion. During the event, David talked at length about a number of topics, while also opening the floor for questions at several intervals of the speech. He grew up in a fundamentalist religious household and wasn't able to listen to secular, mainstream music until the age of 13. As he reached his 20s, he began studying the Bible in depth and found discrepancies that he couldn't accommodate, which led to an internal crisis with his faith in which drinking 15 to 20 drinks a day was the only real way he was able to cope with the crisis. Finally, he accepted the notion that not trying to have all of the answers, nor admitting such in public, was the only way to move on and be content with himself.

In December 2011, SA was able to host Amanda Knief thanks to the Speaker's Bureau from the national SSA. This article summarizes the experiences of that event for the group.

Towards the end of the fall 2011 semester, the Secular Alliance at the University of Pittsburgh had the privilege of hosting Amanda Knief of the Secular Coalition for America. The Godless Lobbyist lecture not only was our organization’s first major event on campus, but brought local attention to our group and labeled us as a legitimate club at our university.