I just saw the recent SMBC comic:


(Click to go to comic page)

Just replace "mathematics" with "nontheist student groups" - same problem: plenty of guys with maybe a few gals showing up to meetings, sometimes*. It's been discussed and analyzed in many nontheist campus orgs, including SURE. One of the problems is that, like in the comic, invariably the idea that we just need to make disbelief more girly is proposed: make some pink signs or something... organize an atheist knitting group.

The problem has been written about before, so I'm not providing much analysis or many solutions (mostly I'm just lazy), but I don't know if the problem is that there's the same kind of stigma of girls being atheists or in atheist groups as there is for girls being interested in math - it doesn't seem like it fits into the same category. I think it's just that there isn't as much interest in joining a group like ours.

Solutions? Something that comes to mind is that we should have more active/interactive outreach - not necessarily outreach designed specifically for the ladies, just going out on campus and doing more than tabling to get our name out. We need more visibility.

There are probably other actions we could take to try to attract women to the group... maybe as far as having a panel event in which female SURE members talk about being female atheists? I don't know. Things to ponder.

*Although there are actually a reasonable number of girls that show up to our meetings...

Posted by Matt Homer

Wooo! The new school year started this week. Welcome back all returning students and welcome to all you damn dirty freshmen. We have a lot of stuff planned for this coming year.

Meetings will be held every Wednesday at 6 pm in Building 387 Room #101. The first meeting will be next Wednesday October 1st.

First up SURE films is presenting Monty Python's The Life of Brian on Friday October 17th at 6 pm in the Student Resource Building (SRB) multipurpose room.

The next month in Conjunction with the Secular Student Alliance and the Freedom From Religion Foundation SURE presents Dan Barker Co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and author of Losing Faith In Faith: From Preacher To Atheist and Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists. Dan will kick off his west coast university speaking tour at UCSB on November 12th at Embarcadero Hall.

As SURE is a community service organization we are planning two events for fall quarter. We will be having a beach cleanup at some point and we are planning on volunteering at a soup kitchen downtown. We did both last year and had tons of fun.

Also on the horizon is Darwin Week next February for which we are planning a few special events.

This quarter is going to be a lot of fun, we look to have a lot of new people and I hope to see many of you at the meetings.