At the 2008 SSA Conference in Washington, D.C., we were happy to award the 2008 SSA Best Awards.  Field Director Alison Bates presented the awards with these remarks.

In the past year the Secular Student Alliance has gone from 80 campus groups to 137 active affiliate groups! That's a growth of 71%. We've had more impressive groups doing impressive work on campus around the world this past year than we've had in any year before. It certainly wasn't easy picking only five groups to be awarded a Best Award!  

This year, in an effort to provide more support to our most outstanding groups, we’ve increased the amount of money that the winners of the awards receive.  Winners for best Service Project, Best Website, Best Media Appearance, and Best New Affiliate will receive $300, up from $100 in previous years.  The Best Overall Affiliate will receive $500 from the SSA.  This money is to recognize your group for their success this past year, and also to help you carry out further impressive projects throughout the next academic year.

Best Service Project
Congratulations to the Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on a great service project!

This group’s project was to send eleven members of their group along with nineteen members of the school’s Campus Crusade for Christ group to New Orleans to carry out relief work.

Chris Calvey, a member of the group who went to New Orleans on behalf of AAF, had this to say:

We were able to spend a lot of time interacting with Christian students from all over the country.  Many were happy, impressed, or even shocked to find out that we were atheists.  After getting to know one another, it became apparent to both sides that it’s possible to put aside our philosophical differences and work together for a greater good.  If we want to improve the images of atheism in this country, I can think of no better way to do it than by volunteering alongside those who might disagree with us.  Complaining about the misconceptions, stereotyping, and discrimination of nonbelievers is one thing we do very well…  Actually working to dispel these is another story.  I am confident that our service project will have the effect of positively shaping their opinion about atheism for the rest of their lives.

Kelly of the Rational Response Squad is writing a year-long series to address theist talking heads in the media. Kelly is a Psychology major, co-host of the RRS Radio show, and has been featured on ABC debating Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort.  Here, we reprint select articles with permission.

May 17 - If Sex Is a Drug, What Isn't?

 Summer Intern for University Programs

The Society for Humanistic Judaism is looking for a summer intern to fill a project-based contract position.

The project entails compiling a manual for university Humanistic havurot programs explaining Humanistic Judaism and including at minimum the following components:

This story originally appeared in The Daily Cardinal (the campus newspaper of the University of Wisconsin at Madison) on 04/03/08, and is used by permission.
Article by Sajia Hall of The Daily Cardinal.

Lori Lipman Brown is Director of the  Secular Coalition for America, where she serves as the first Congressional lobbyist representing atheists.  She is also a speaker on the SSA's Speaker's Bureau.  She writes a weekly blog for The Humanist; we reprint select articles with permission.

Kelly of the Rational Response Squad is writing a year-long series to address theist talking heads in the media. Kelly is a Psychology major, co-host of the RRS Radio show, and has been featured on ABC debating Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort.  Here, we reprint select articles with permission.

March 12 - Vox Day - "There is no god. Because I'm an asshole."

Phil Ferguson is one of the newest members of the Secular Student Alliance's Board of Directors.  On March 11, he saw Richard Dawkins speak in Madison, Wisconsin.

Richard Dawkins is on a speaking tour to promote the paperback release of The God Delusion, sponsored in part by the Secular Student Alliance.  On March 11th, Mr. Dawkins was in Madison, WI and I only had to drive five hours to see him.  I arrived in Madison early to take Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and Debbie Goddard from the Center for Inquiry to lunch.  Upon my arrival, I was informed that Mr. Dawkins would also be joining us.