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"Free Thinking Students Establish National Alliance"

Source: The Diamondback (University of Maryland-Baltimore County)
Date: September 24, 1996
Author: Amanda Crawford


Three members of the campus Atheist Students Association recently joined with students across the nation to form the Campus Freethought Alliance.

The alliance is a national umbrella group for student "free thought" organizations, which include atheist, agnostic, skeptic and humanist groups.

Its goals include promoting a friendly campus environment for free thinkers and encouraging the establishment of other campus free-thinking organizations, according to the group's declaration.

Alireza Aliabadi, Brianna Waters and Keith Augustine attended a conference for student atheist, humanist and skeptic leaders in August. The conference was sponsored by the Council for Secular Humanism in Amherst, N.Y.

When they were first invited to New York, they had no idea why, said Waters, treasurer of the CFA and a junior evolutionary biology major.

"They told us that they were going to give us free critical thinking classes," she said. "In addition, we founded this organization."

The students, representing 15 college campuses, began to discuss the need for a national organization to coordinate the activities of student free-thought groups. At the conference, they formed the CFA and wrote its founding statement, "A Declaration of Necessity."

In November, the CFA will hold its first conference, when they plan to write a constitution and begin planning activities.

"As members of a small but significant minority," the declaration reads, "we often have been forced to reside in a social environment caustic to our needs, interests and convictions. Instead of diminishing, opposition to free thought is now increasing with ominous rapidity."

Aliabadi, CFA vice president and a senior chemistry major, believes the alliance will provide a close link between campus groups and other nationwide organizations.

"I consider this a historic moment in free-thought history, whereby campus students across the nation are joining hands and minds to further strengthen the free-thought movement on the collegiate level," Aliabadi
said.

According to Aliabadi, the CFA has about 20 member organizations, including one in Canada, and new ones are signing on daily.

The time was right to form such an alliance because of the increase in religious fundamentalism and the simultaneous transition by many people to non-traditional beliefs, organizers said.

While there are national student religious groups, such as Campus Crusade and Hillel, there were no such national groups for non-believing students, said Augustine, secretary of CFA and a junior philosophy major.

"Rarely are there atheist organizations on campus," he said.

"We wanted to spread free thought on campus and promote separation of church and state," Waters said, "so that free thinkers can look objectively at things without being persecuted by the religious right by which I don't just mean Christians, but any kind of religion that tries to force their values across secular lines."


This article was retrieved from www.inform.umd.edu/News/Diamondback/../news-free thinking
 

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