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Students create day for secular thinkers

Source: kykernal.com (University of Kentucky)
Date: November 28, 2007
Author:  C.J. Conklin

A campus group will promote secular ideas and offer students a chance to display their nonreligious outlook today at the first ever Secular Solidarity Day.

UK SHIFT, the Society for Humanistic, Intellectual and Free Thought, will host the event in front of the Classroom Building from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The group encourages students, especially those that consider themselves to be atheists, agnostics, humanists, free-thinkers, or another nonreligious affiliation, to stop by to find out more about secularism.

Adam Leedy, an electrical engineering senior who helped create the group and now serves as its vice president, hopes the event brings secular students together.

"We want to make it obvious that there is a secular thinking population at this university with a voice to be heard," Leedy said.
The organization will be handing out yellow buttons for anyone to wear to show their support of secular thinking, said Johannah Oldiges, a senior English major who helped organize the event.

"I started UK SHIFT because I wanted to create a place for people with non-theistic views like mine to interact," Leedy said. "I didn't really know any people on campus who shared views similar to my own, but I knew that they had to exist."

The group meets twice a month on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. to discuss event planning or interesting topics that relate to secularism. Any student can join the group by showing up at a meeting or contacting any of the current members.

Though this is the first Secular Solidarity Day, the group has hosted numerous events on campus since the group started. Last January they hosted Darwin Day, which featured a lecture on evolution from biology professor James Krupa. In spring 2006, the group showed the movie, "The God Who Wasn't There," Leedy said. SHIFT also celebrated National Day of Reason last spring with a documentary from evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, titled "Root of All Evil."

The group hopes that Secular Solidarity Day will become an annual event at UK, Leedy said, but it could depend on funding in the future since SHIFT is not directly funded by UK.

"SHIFT doesn't get any direct funding from any particular entity," Leedy said. "When we want to put together an event we usually just throw in as much money as we can and try to budget accordingly. The good thing is most of our events don't require much cash since a lot of our speakers offer their time for free."


This article was retrieved from http://media.www.kykernel.com/media/storage/paper305/news/2007/11/28/CampusNews/Students.Create.Day.For.Secular.Thinkers-3118773.shtml
 

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