What’s in a name?

It’s mid July, which means it’s time for me to start thinking about club events for the fall semester. And as I’ve been brainstorming and figuring out what needs updating on the website, one thing keeps bugging me.

Our name.

Our student organization is officially the Society of Non-Theists. When I co-founded this club two years ago, the name seemed like a good idea. One, we thought “atheist” provoked a negative reaction from most people. Not just religious people, mind you – but secular people who didn’t want the consequences of labeling themselves an atheist. We figured by toning it down a bit we’d be able to slip under the radar – have events and start dialogs before people actually knew we were mostly a bunch of atheists. Pete Stark had just used the term non-theist, so we thought that was a good stand in. Two, the vagueness of “non-theist” allowed us to use it as an umbrella term. It wasn’t just a club for atheists, but for agnostics, humanists, or whoever else wanted to come.

But the more I think about it, the more I don’t like it for many reasons:

1. Non-theist really isn’t an umbrella term. The prefix “non” is effectively equivalent to “a”, so it’s just a silly way of saying atheist. The only reason it works as an umbrella term is because no one really knows what it means. Which leads to my second point…

2. No one really knows what non-theist means. We’ve slipped under the radar a little too much. I think a lot of students don’t discover our club because it doesn’t have “atheist” or “secular” right in the name. This is especially problematic on the student organization website Purdue has. There’s no way to search in the descriptions of clubs – just for words in the name (it’s an awful, stupid system). So if someone searches for atheist, nothing will come up. They’ll only find us if they happen to browse through the Special Interest category of clubs, which is another debate in our group. Do people look for atheist groups in the Religion category, or would an atheist never bother to click Religion?

3. My ideology has changed since I first formed the club, and now I think it’s wrong to shy away from the term “atheist.” There’s no reason to be ashamed of it, and people are going to keep treating it like a negative term if even us atheists won’t use it. If anything we need to have organizations that proudly call themselves atheist, so people can see us volunteering and holding insightful events and smiling and laughing and just being good, normal, human beings.

If I had a time machine, I would go back and rename the club something like Purdue Atheist, Agnostic, and Secular Students – PAASS. It’s inclusive and has an acronym you can actually use and say – unlike SNT. Hell, I have a hard enough time saying Society of Non-Theists without developing some kind of lisp. But the problem is I don’t have a time machine, and I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to change the club name now. Granted, we’ve already been around for two years, but I don’t know if it’s worth the confusion to go around changing a name. There would certainly be people who would think we’re some different club, and then there’s the whole business of our website and email having non-theist in it. I guess those wouldn’t be too bad to change, but it would still be annoying.

So, am I over analyzing this? Is non-theist a fine word or should we have more atheist pride? I guess I should really be asking the club members rather than random internet people, but consider this more me talking out loud.

What's in a name?

It’s mid July, which means it’s time for me to start thinking about club events for the fall semester. And as I’ve been brainstorming and figuring out what needs updating on the website, one thing keeps bugging me.

Our name.

Our student organization is officially the Society of Non-Theists. When I co-founded this club two years ago, the name seemed like a good idea. One, we thought “atheist” provoked a negative reaction from most people. Not just religious people, mind you – but secular people who didn’t want the consequences of labeling themselves an atheist. We figured by toning it down a bit we’d be able to slip under the radar – have events and start dialogs before people actually knew we were mostly a bunch of atheists. Pete Stark had just used the term non-theist, so we thought that was a good stand in. Two, the vagueness of “non-theist” allowed us to use it as an umbrella term. It wasn’t just a club for atheists, but for agnostics, humanists, or whoever else wanted to come.

But the more I think about it, the more I don’t like it for many reasons:

1. Non-theist really isn’t an umbrella term. The prefix “non” is effectively equivalent to “a”, so it’s just a silly way of saying atheist. The only reason it works as an umbrella term is because no one really knows what it means. Which leads to my second point…

2. No one really knows what non-theist means. We’ve slipped under the radar a little too much. I think a lot of students don’t discover our club because it doesn’t have “atheist” or “secular” right in the name. This is especially problematic on the student organization website Purdue has. There’s no way to search in the descriptions of clubs – just for words in the name (it’s an awful, stupid system). So if someone searches for atheist, nothing will come up. They’ll only find us if they happen to browse through the Special Interest category of clubs, which is another debate in our group. Do people look for atheist groups in the Religion category, or would an atheist never bother to click Religion?

3. My ideology has changed since I first formed the club, and now I think it’s wrong to shy away from the term “atheist.” There’s no reason to be ashamed of it, and people are going to keep treating it like a negative term if even us atheists won’t use it. If anything we need to have organizations that proudly call themselves atheist, so people can see us volunteering and holding insightful events and smiling and laughing and just being good, normal, human beings.

If I had a time machine, I would go back and rename the club something like Purdue Atheist, Agnostic, and Secular Students – PAASS. It’s inclusive and has an acronym you can actually use and say – unlike SNT. Hell, I have a hard enough time saying Society of Non-Theists without developing some kind of lisp. But the problem is I don’t have a time machine, and I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to change the club name now. Granted, we’ve already been around for two years, but I don’t know if it’s worth the confusion to go around changing a name. There would certainly be people who would think we’re some different club, and then there’s the whole business of our website and email having non-theist in it. I guess those wouldn’t be too bad to change, but it would still be annoying.

So, am I over analyzing this? Is non-theist a fine word or should we have more atheist pride? I guess I should really be asking the club members rather than random internet people, but consider this more me talking out loud.

Almost done

I should probably have a lot more to post about now that the conference in almost over, but I’m so brain dead that I can’t come up with much. Hearing technical biology talks (80% of which are over my head) from 8 to 5 is just mentally exhausting after a while. That being said, I really enjoyed the conference. There’s so much cool science going on out there, and now I have all these neat ideas floating around in my head. And while the whole grad school application process still freaks me out, I feel like I have a lot better idea of what I need to do since we had some talks about that.

Though honestly, the best part was just being around so many nerdy biologists. It was amazing sitting in a bar, and instead of hearing people talk about sports, hearing people talking about transcriptome characterization or population genetics or who knows what. Everyone just went into absurdly geeky mode. Take this dinner conversation, just one example out of many:

My Prof: Those are all the Oregon State people over there, and those are all the Michigan people sitting there.
Me: And all of us Purdue people clumped together here.
My Prof: Yeah.
Me: So overall we have a diverse population, but when you look at subpopulations there’s very low variation.
My Prof: Yep!

One more, just if you don’t believe me:

Me: Excuse me! *trying to scoot past someone to get in a seat* Sorry!
Guy: Oh, don’t worry, it’s an open niche that needs to be filled!

My flight leaves 6:45 am tomorrow and I’ll be back in my apartment around 7 pm (hopefully). I plan on wearing my atheist club shirt for that trip, so we’ll see if I get any fun stories out of that. You know you’re officially a blogger when you start doing random crap just for the potential blog posts.

Leavin on a jet plane, etc etc

Well tomorrow I’ll leave my apartment at 7:30 am and won’t be back until 7 pm on Wednesday the 17th for Evolution 2009, wooo! Because I care about you guys so much, I’ve set up autoposts for every day I’m gone to show you some random fun videos I like. Don’t want to leave you without updates for a week! I’ll have limited internet access through my phone and some public computers at the conference, but don’t expect too much. Even though my phone has a keyboard, I don’t think I could tolerate typing more than a paragraph, haha. I’ll make sure to tweet a sadface when I’m standing outside the Discovery Institute. Don’t worry, the lack of updates will be made up with the billion stories and photos I’ll probably have when I get back.

Somewhat related, should I wear my club t-shirt on my various plane rides home? Photos of the atheistic beauty here… I mean the shirt, not the model. I look like I’m on uppers in the first photo and downers in the second one, wtf. Anyway, might make a neat social experiment. Where do I get the most dirty/confused looks: Pullman, Seattle, Chicago, or Indianapolis? …I think I know the answer to that one already.

Edit: Here, have a photo of where I’m going. Pretty, isn’t it?

Professor stalking

So in preparation for Evolution 2009, I’ve been highlighting all the different professors I’m potentially interested in for grad school. There are actually a handful from my list (yes, I have an excel file going for the grad school search, shush) who will be attending, so I’m pretty excited. At the very least I’m going to go to their talks and try to introduce myself afterwards. Some of my current top picks will be there, so I’m hoping I like them personality-wise. That is, their research seems awesome, but I hope they’re friendly/nice/interesting/etc.

Any advice on how to approach random professors at conferences and show your interest about grad school? My current prof told me to be a “persistent stalker” since popular professors are usually swamped with people trying to talk to them. Does this require a net? Tranquilizers? Bribery with coffee? I’m just afraid I’m going to go into Utter Social Awkwardness Mode, which happens every once in a while. I don’t want to come off as too interested, since I’m not dead set on any of them, but I don’t want to seem too casual either. *fret fret fret*

Religion at Purdue's Graduation

Hey everyone. First I’d like to thank all of you for your well wishes. I’m still feeling crappy, but my fever is gone so that’s a giant relief. I want to apologize ahead of time if my posts for the next couple of days aren’t as well written/coherent/witty as normal. I’ve been writing emails and IMing friends, and after I reread what I wrote I think “What the hell does that even mean?” Or worse, I’ll be in the middle of writing something and I’ll just end up blankly staring at the screen for a while. I guess these drugs are just that good.

Anyway, onto atheisty stuff. So, Purdue’s graduation ceremony (“commencement” technically) has many religious elements that our student organization is going to try to take care of. I have been to graduation for a friend and heard many identical reports from others, so that’s where I’m getting my information. Purdue actually has four separate commencements divided by schools since we have way too many people to fit in Elliot Hall of Music. Each of these contain these general elements:

– A talk by a religious leader from the community. There’s a Protestant, a Catholic, a Jew, and a Muslim. Sounds like a set up for a bad joke, eh? Anyway, each commencement gets one of these, not all four at one commencement. I’ll get back to this.
– Following the talk is a “moment of reflection.” Aka, prayer by another name – the vast majority of the audience prays during this time. But hey, maybe it’s not meant to be religious, right?
– Following this the choir breaks out into song singing “Amen” over and over again for a couple minutes while the backdrop screen shows clouds serenely floating by. Whoops. Guess it is meant to be religious.
– Other songs the choir sings are hymns (a friend had to point this out to me, since I wasn’t really listening to what they were singing).

Back to the religious leaders. The one I saw (the Muslim) wasn’t too overtly religious. He did mention God a couple times at the end though and finished with “Amen” (I guess my standards for “overtly religious” are pretty low). I’ve been told the other speakers were similar. I haven’t seen them myself – Purdue streams its commencement live online, but I could never get the stupid codec for it to work.

They’re obviously picking four different faiths to try to be diverse and inclusive, but this ultimately fails. The day you graduate depends on your school, not your religion – what if you’re a Muslim stuck listening to the Catholic? A Jew listening to the Muslim? I hope this wouldn’t matter, but when you’re trying to seem all inclusive, it doesn’t help when the people actually attending only see one. More importantly, how about the students who aren’t represented? It’s not just atheists – I know Purdue has a fairly significant Hindu community thanks to the Engineering program. What about them? Conveniently they’ve chosen all the Abrahamic religions…

Though honestly, I don’t think it’s worth the fight to get rid of the religious leaders all together. One, knowing Purdue this would be an impossible battle. But honestly I don’t mind having a religious person talk if they’re saying something intelligent. If we could just enforce a rule like not explicitly mentioning God or using religious terminology, I’d be okay with that compromise. If we had a local humanist chaplain I’d suggest having them talk, but unfortunately we don’t. My biggest beef is with all the “Amen” excessive singing and hymns business. That’s obviously completely inappropriate. Let people have their moment of reflection, but don’t beat us over the head with the message that we’re supposed to be praying.

Any advice on how to go about dealing with this? I’m basically thinking a petition or letters from students/staff/alumni about how graduation should remain secular, plus a long main letter from the club explaining why this is inappropriate at a public institution. Tips on successful petitions, who to talk to, what to include in the letter, etc would be greatly appreciated!

Religion at Purdue’s Graduation

Hey everyone. First I’d like to thank all of you for your well wishes. I’m still feeling crappy, but my fever is gone so that’s a giant relief. I want to apologize ahead of time if my posts for the next couple of days aren’t as well written/coherent/witty as normal. I’ve been writing emails and IMing friends, and after I reread what I wrote I think “What the hell does that even mean?” Or worse, I’ll be in the middle of writing something and I’ll just end up blankly staring at the screen for a while. I guess these drugs are just that good.

Anyway, onto atheisty stuff. So, Purdue’s graduation ceremony (“commencement” technically) has many religious elements that our student organization is going to try to take care of. I have been to graduation for a friend and heard many identical reports from others, so that’s where I’m getting my information. Purdue actually has four separate commencements divided by schools since we have way too many people to fit in Elliot Hall of Music. Each of these contain these general elements:

– A talk by a religious leader from the community. There’s a Protestant, a Catholic, a Jew, and a Muslim. Sounds like a set up for a bad joke, eh? Anyway, each commencement gets one of these, not all four at one commencement. I’ll get back to this.
– Following the talk is a “moment of reflection.” Aka, prayer by another name – the vast majority of the audience prays during this time. But hey, maybe it’s not meant to be religious, right?
– Following this the choir breaks out into song singing “Amen” over and over again for a couple minutes while the backdrop screen shows clouds serenely floating by. Whoops. Guess it is meant to be religious.
– Other songs the choir sings are hymns (a friend had to point this out to me, since I wasn’t really listening to what they were singing).

Back to the religious leaders. The one I saw (the Muslim) wasn’t too overtly religious. He did mention God a couple times at the end though and finished with “Amen” (I guess my standards for “overtly religious” are pretty low). I’ve been told the other speakers were similar. I haven’t seen them myself – Purdue streams its commencement live online, but I could never get the stupid codec for it to work.

They’re obviously picking four different faiths to try to be diverse and inclusive, but this ultimately fails. The day you graduate depends on your school, not your religion – what if you’re a Muslim stuck listening to the Catholic? A Jew listening to the Muslim? I hope this wouldn’t matter, but when you’re trying to seem all inclusive, it doesn’t help when the people actually attending only see one. More importantly, how about the students who aren’t represented? It’s not just atheists – I know Purdue has a fairly significant Hindu community thanks to the Engineering program. What about them? Conveniently they’ve chosen all the Abrahamic religions…

Though honestly, I don’t think it’s worth the fight to get rid of the religious leaders all together. One, knowing Purdue this would be an impossible battle. But honestly I don’t mind having a religious person talk if they’re saying something intelligent. If we could just enforce a rule like not explicitly mentioning God or using religious terminology, I’d be okay with that compromise. If we had a local humanist chaplain I’d suggest having them talk, but unfortunately we don’t. My biggest beef is with all the “Amen” excessive singing and hymns business. That’s obviously completely inappropriate. Let people have their moment of reflection, but don’t beat us over the head with the message that we’re supposed to be praying.

Any advice on how to go about dealing with this? I’m basically thinking a petition or letters from students/staff/alumni about how graduation should remain secular, plus a long main letter from the club explaining why this is inappropriate at a public institution. Tips on successful petitions, who to talk to, what to include in the letter, etc would be greatly appreciated!

It's officially summer!

Why? While walking to lab today, I got my first cat call of the year. Woo. I don’t know if there’s something about warm weather that gets guys all worked up, or if it’s the fact that I’m no longer wearing jackets and sweaters that hide my boobage*, but this always happens in the summer. Seriously, can someone with more testosterone than me explain this phenomenon to me? I really don’t get why guys think it’s so awesome to hang halfway out of their car whistling and yelling nonsensical flirtations to some random girl. I never know if I should be flattered, or if they’re just doing it sarcastically to mock me…

Me: I don’t get catcalling, like while you’re driving away quickly. What’s the point?
Male Friend: I think it’s more about the guys in the group… guys don’t do it alone
Me: Yeah, it was the passenger in a car. I just don’t get it
Male Friend: Oh, so he was a Scrub. You don’t want none of that.
Me: lol scrubs don’t get no love from me, don’t worry

*I’ve been told that I have “surprise boobs.” Most of my shirts come up to my neck so no gratuitous cleavage, and from about September to April I’m wearing sweaters that apparently flatten me out. I’ve caused more than one guy to go wide eye with shock the first time they see me shirtless. This is why I don’t get girls that flaunt cleavage all the time – it’s so much more fun to take them by surprise! That being said, my threadless shirts are pretty tight in the chest, so I guess that shows them off a bit. You know what, I can’t help that they make those shirts for skinny A cup girls… Wow, I’ve been a bit obsessed with boobs lately, haven’t I? I can’t stop talking about them! Boobs! Boobies! Breasticles! Ahhhhhh!!!

It’s officially summer!

Why? While walking to lab today, I got my first cat call of the year. Woo. I don’t know if there’s something about warm weather that gets guys all worked up, or if it’s the fact that I’m no longer wearing jackets and sweaters that hide my boobage*, but this always happens in the summer. Seriously, can someone with more testosterone than me explain this phenomenon to me? I really don’t get why guys think it’s so awesome to hang halfway out of their car whistling and yelling nonsensical flirtations to some random girl. I never know if I should be flattered, or if they’re just doing it sarcastically to mock me…

Me: I don’t get catcalling, like while you’re driving away quickly. What’s the point?
Male Friend: I think it’s more about the guys in the group… guys don’t do it alone
Me: Yeah, it was the passenger in a car. I just don’t get it
Male Friend: Oh, so he was a Scrub. You don’t want none of that.
Me: lol scrubs don’t get no love from me, don’t worry

*I’ve been told that I have “surprise boobs.” Most of my shirts come up to my neck so no gratuitous cleavage, and from about September to April I’m wearing sweaters that apparently flatten me out. I’ve caused more than one guy to go wide eye with shock the first time they see me shirtless. This is why I don’t get girls that flaunt cleavage all the time – it’s so much more fun to take them by surprise! That being said, my threadless shirts are pretty tight in the chest, so I guess that shows them off a bit. You know what, I can’t help that they make those shirts for skinny A cup girls… Wow, I’ve been a bit obsessed with boobs lately, haven’t I? I can’t stop talking about them! Boobs! Boobies! Breasticles! Ahhhhhh!!!

Oh, uh, hello there

Today my friend/new roommate (The froomate? Can I refer to him as that from now on?) and I went on a quick Walmart run. He needed ingredients for his stir fry, I needed sports bras and new panties. Random combination between the two of us, I know, but what is Walmart for other than random cheap shit. Anyway, as I have two bras clutched in hand and I’m deep in thought over which panties to pick out, who randomly walks by other than our older, male Associate Dean of Students who is the head of the office for student organizations at Purdue, and personally knows me through my work as President of the Non-Theists. He waves happily and I kind of give a mortified little wave back.

Awwwkwwaaaarrrdddd.

And you know, this is why I hate shopping for underwear. I always have this fear that someone I know who I do not want to know what my panties look like is randomly going to run into me. Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive. But you know what, it’s just a tad bit annoying that all the previous times I’ve run into him in innocuous situations he didn’t know me well enough to recognize me, but now that he knows who I am, he finds me looking at panties. Curses!