The Humanist Student Association had our callout meeting on April 7, 2008 at 8PM in the Hoosier Room at the IMU. We had about 20+ people show up. Following are the minutes from the meeting with notes. (Note: Two stars (**) means this item was discussed at the meeting, while three stars (***) means it was not and will be moved to the next meeting agenda.
Meeting Agenda: Callout for Humanist Student Association
Monday, April 7, 2008 8 PM
Opening: What is the HSA all about? Why do we want to have a group of atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, and humanists? What do you all believe? What would you like to get out of this group?…and we’ll discuss more later.
(**We introduced ourselves and explained why we came.**)
I. We’re official!
A. I recently got authorization by the SAO to make us an official campus organization. (Now, all we need is to get the IT accounts up and running, and obtain a financial account. This can happen once we have an advisor.)
II. Membership
A. Currently, we (that’s Sarah, Eoban, and Jared) have self appointed ourselves as the three officers. We created the following offices. President and treasurer are necessary for the purposes of being recognized by IU, and webmaster is necessary so we can have a kickass website.
a. President—Sarah Kaiser
b. Treasurer—Eoban Binder
c. Webmaster—Jared Pease
B. Jared has created an awesome website for us, which is temporarily hosted at http://mypage.iu.edu/~jmpease/.
C. What defines a member? Can members only be IU students? Or can they be faculty and staff as well? How about members of the surrounding community? Can non-students be officers?
(***This will be moved to our next agenda, as it was not fully discussed here.***)
D. Those of your interested in joining, please fill out the info sheets with your name, email, phone number, etc.
(**We did, and wrote down if we weren’t available at certain times, so Sarah could schedule the next meeting.**)
III. Constitution
A. Have a look at the current constitution, and discuss any possible changes.
1. How members/officials are voted in and out.
2. Caucus or secret ballot?
3. We decided that votes will be taken of the group to decide on new officials each year during the summer before classes start, or around the first couple weeks of classes. What do you all think? Should we have elections/decide on a different arrangement of officials now? Do we need more officials with different titles? How does everyone want to help out or be involved?
(***We didn’t do this, it’s moved to the next meeting agenda. We only discussed caucus vs. secret ballot, and decided on a secret ballot as the method of voting of choice for everything.***)
IV. Advisors
A. Any ideas?
(**Ideas were written down on note cards with name, email, etc. Sarah has since emailed the two recommendations, and is waiting for a response.**)
V. Speakers
A. Frank Zindler
1. An atheist member of the American Atheists, has attended 16 universities and colleges and knows 27 languages. I’ve been in email contact with him. Possible topics include:
a. Ethics Without God, Creationist Pseudoscience, Critique of Mormonism and Christian Science, Science vs. Religion, The Origins of Christianity, and The Historicity of Jesus—A Critique.
2. Debate vs. single speaker
a. My idea is to possibly find a religious speaker to debate him on one of the above topics. I really like “Ethics without God”…but simply debating the evidence for God could be interesting. I am also thinking we could possibly have a series of talks or debates.
B. Bryan Edward
1. Of the Center for Free Inquiry in Indianapolis. Jon Hobbs introduced the possibility of him speaking.
C. Professors on campus
1. We could look into professors who study religion, philosophy, psychology, biology and evolution, physics, etc. We could hold round table discussions with professors of differing views on topics pertaining to humanism.
(**We prefer the idea of a single speaker over a debate, though we agree a debate may have its merits. We didn’t vote on this, just spoke as a group. People in the group also thought that it would be good to start small—with professors and even grad students—before paying money to bring in bigger names. We will look into ideas for professors speaking, or even just having discussions with professors and students alike that we invite the whole student body to attend, and ask questions after.**)
VI. Other activities
A. What other ways can we be active?
1. My ideas:
a. Bring speakers to campus.
b. Round table discussions. (e.g.: have professors and students, and a select topic to discuss, such as evolution and creationism, or ethics without God, or something similar.)
c. Simply informal meetings…to discuss religion, science, secularism, etc.
d. Attending conferences and events. (e.g.: a conference in Washington, D.C. this summer)
e. Volunteering
f. Activism, demonstrations.
2. Your ideas?
a. Is our group simply philosophical in nature? Or does the nature of secularism and humanism bleed over into other areas of life?
b. Do we want to be politically involved? Do we want to promote secularism not only with discussions and speakers, but also with political activism?
c. Does humanist/secular philosophy include volunteerism as a part of our group’s purpose? Basically, should we volunteer for events in Bloomington to not only practice what we may or may not preach, but to promote our cause?
(**We like volunteerism as an activity as a group, because it can dispel myths that atheists are “immoral” or don’t care about others. We may want to be careful with political involvement, as our group includes people for whom atheism leads to different political views. We can agree on separation of church and state as a good political goal. So we do want to do more than just discuss. How much more, we still are waiting to see.**)
VII. Affiliation with outside groups
A. Secular Student Alliance
1. Mission of the SSA is to organize, unite, educate, and serve students and student communities that promote the ideals of scientific and critical inquiry, democracy, secularism, and human based ethics.
2. The requirement to affiliate is to be in agreement with this mission. I applied for us to be affiliated, but if we take issue with this mission we can easily un-affiliate.
3. Benefits to being affiliated:
a. Speakers Bureau which helps cover costs of speakers on their list.
b. Money given to help with events, pay for t-shirts, whatever our group sees as necessary to help us work towards our cause.
c. Monetary “Best” awards for groups who have done exceptional work, have a nice website, etc.
(**We want to affiliate! We seemed to basically agree on the mission statement, so we’ll stick with this alliance and see what they have to offer.**)
VIIII. Meetings
A. Let’s set up a time for our next meeting…
(**It will probably be a Wednesday at 8PM…likely biweekly.**)
Sarah Kaiser :: Apr.07.2008 ::
Minutes ::
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