Campus Freethinkers Meet, Formalize Structure In Second Amherst Meeting
by Derek Araujo
The following article is from the Secular
Humanist Bulletin, Volume 13 , Number 1 .
On the weekend of 1 November, the Center
for Inquiry hosted the first official meeting of the recently formed Campus Freethought Alliance. Students
from several colleges across the United States and Canada convened to discuss plans for
the future of the Alliance. The weekend conference, which marked the formal establishment
of the CFA, was both exciting and productive.
The Campus Freethought Alliance
was conceived durng a meeting last August at the Center for Inquiry. (More details
appear in Free Inquiry, Fall
1996, and SHB, Vol. 12 No. 4.)
Four of the eight original founding members, myself included, were able to attend the
meeting held this November. The CFA was formed in response to the on-campus effects of
growth in religious fundamentalism, anti-science, anti-secularism, and belief in mysticism
and the paranormal. The CFA, which includes student humanist, secularist, non-theist, and
skeptic organizations, will serve as a uniting umbrella organization for college and high
school free thought clubs. Working in conjunction with the Council
for Secular Humanism, the CFA will assist and support student freethinkers in
establishing local clubs and planning campus events.
It is hoped that the CFA will provide student freethinkers with campus environments
that are friendlier to their needs and concerns; all too often, young freethinkers are
left feeling awkward, desperate, or isolated because of their unbelief. The CFA will
defend actively science, reason, and the rights of student unbelievers from attack on
campus, while concurrently preserving secularism and the separation of church and state at
our educational institutions.
The November weekend at the Center
for Inquiry was extremely busy and productive. Within a period of twenty-four hours, a
Constitution was drafted and ratified, a press release was authored, and an informational
pamphlet for interested students and supporters was created. The date of the conference
held much significance, as 4 November marked the 200th anniversary of ratification of the
U.S. Treaty with Tripoli. The treaty declares: "[T]he government of the United States
is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." A CFA press release called
attention to this fact, emphasizing that true American patriots are those willing to
uphold the secularism and pluralism established in the United States Constitution.
We students who attended the November meeting are excited by the attention that the CFA
has received. The CFA has been featured in numerous newspapers, from campus publications
to the New York Times and the national press.
Amid a flurry of electronic mail, we have received requests for information from dozens of
colleges and high schools across the globe, from North America to New Zealand to the
Ukraine. It is with great hope that we look forward to our first nation-wide convention,
to be held at the end of May 1997.
I personally would like to thank everyone at the Center for Inquiry for having
transformed the CFA from a deeply inspired dream into a hugely successful reality. Most of
all, I would like to thank my enthusiastic and assiduous student colleagues for providing
the CFA with the impetus to endure well into the future.
Derek Araujo, a student at Harvard University, is
President of the Campus Freethought
Alliance.
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