final draft of email

Please could you forward this message to all students in your department.

Lancaster University Humanist Association

We are a group of Lancaster students from different years who wish to set up a humanist association, with intentions of the association being formally recognised by LUSU by this year. The society does not intend to be focused exclusively on secular humanism, but instead, seeks to involve students from any background – religious, atheist or otherwise - who have an interest in humanist thought. We would love to meet anyone who is interested in getting involved in the society at our first meeting in Furness Lecture theatre 3, at 7:00pm on Wednesday of week 8, December 1st, so we can see what direction other people feel the society should take.

Here are a couple of ideas for the society so far:

- We hope to provide an influential ethical perspective on campus without the need for religion.

- We hope to provide an area for people to engage in discussion over ethics and society.

- We hope to host engaging lectures on a variety of topics with guest speakers from both within and outside of the university.

- We hope to become an official affiliate of the British Humanist Association.

- We hope to engage religious societies in debates over topical and ethical issues.

- And of course, we hope to have a varied and inclusive social calendar, with events ranging from hosting ‘quiet nights in’ during freshers’ week, to helping to stage charity events on campus.

If you can’t make the first meeting in week 8, alternatively, message us at luhumanists@gmail.com with your details so we can add you to the mailing list and let you know what’s going on.

If you wish to know more about us, join our facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lancaster-University-Humanists-Association/158225100881843?v=info

Or alternatively, check out our blog, which we hope in time members will be willing to contribute to: http://thelancasterhumanist.blogspot.com/

You can also follow us on twitter: @LancUniHumanist

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

LUHA 

info/ email to be sent to departments and societies

info

We are a collection of humanists at Lancaster University who wish to create an official society promoting humanism in all of its forms. This group's initial aim is to gather support for the establishment of this society, and to form a solid base of members on which it can operate. We understand that humanist principles cannot, and maybe should not, be monopolised by just secular standpoints, and therefore wish to be open to students of all religious backgrounds.

We hope to provide an influential ethical perspective on campus without the need for religion.

We hope to provide an area for people to engage in discussion over ethics and society.

We hope to host engaging lectures on a variety of topics with prestigious guest speakers.

We aim to be an official affiliate of the British Humanist Society.

We hope to be an inclusive secular presence on campus performing many charitable roles which are currently provided by religious organisations, from hosting quiet nights during freshers week for those who do not wish to drink, to staging charity events.

We also wish to engage religious societies in debates over topical and ethical issues.

And of course, we aim to have a varied and inclusive social calender.

If you wish to join our society, or even just the LUHA mailing list, please message us with your email address and we'll add you to our system.

Visit our blog to see articles written by Lancaster students. If you would like to contribute, just send an article you've written to either the facebook page or luhumanists@gmail.com , and we'll upload it unedited. It can be a topical item or it could be a feature, be creative.

Email

Please could you forward this message to all students in your department.

We are a small group of Lancaster students from different years who wish to set up a humanist society. This society does not intend to be exclusively atheist or agnostic, but instead to represent students from any background who have an interest in humanist thought. We have a series of aims for direction we currently intend the society to take. If successful, we wouldn’t be the normal humanist society which centres mainly around discussion with occasional activism, but instead to be a very active society in many fields including charity promotion, discussion of ethical issues, debates, and bringing experienced lecturers and public figures to speak on campus.

We predict that there will be different sects within the society, from the hard-line atheists to those who have religious faith in one form or another. However, we hope to bring everyone together under a consensus of rational discourse and free thinking. The last thing we want to do is be dogmatic, and attempt to provide a moral code to which we must all adhere.

We would love involvement from those who feel strongly about humanism, to those who are just curious of what it involves. At the same time we would encourage those who cant give up much time to join, as well as those who are really keen to have a strong involvement. The more people who join, the more we make a statement to LUSU that our society represents a large portion of the student population, it would also aid attempts to get higher profile speakers.

Here are a couple of our aims for the society:

We hope to provide an influential ethical perspective on campus without the need for religion.

We hope to provide an area for people to engage in discussion over ethics and society.

We hope to host engaging lectures on a variety of topics with prestigious guest speakers.

We aim to be an official affiliate of the British Humanist Society.

We hope to be an inclusive secular presence on campus performing many charitable roles which are currently provided by religious organisations, from hosting quiet nights during freshers week for those who do not wish to drink, to staging charity events.

We hope to promote the work of all charities across campus to a wider audience.

We also wish to engage religious societies in debates over topical and ethical issues.

And of course, we aim to have a varied and inclusive social calender.

If you wish to join our society, or even just the LUHA mailing list, please message us with your email address and we'll add you to our system:

luhumanist@gmail.com

If you wish to know more about us, join our facebook group:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lancaster-University-Humanists-Association/158225100881843?v=info

Or alternatively, check out our blog, which we hope members would be willing to contribute to, in order to encourage well structured discourse over topical or general issues between Lancaster based students:

http://thelancasterhumanist.blogspot.com/

You can also follow us on twitter:

@LancUniHumanist

We hope to see you soon. We will hold our first meeting in Furness SCR at 3o’clock on Wednesday week 8 to see how many members we may have and what direction people feel the society should take.

Adam Henshall

President 

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what do we think? continue discussion in comments and the post will be amended every time we come to a decision.

On Campus Humanism; A Charity Overview

A new academic year has dawned and campus, as ever, is flooded with the light of new ideas. There are second years and third years vying for exec positions, and planning the “tactical usurp”, while freshers run frantically from meeting to meeting attempting to justify the £5 they paid to join whichever society it was they thought vaguely interested them. Everyone hoping to make their own mark on their society of choice.

Lancaster has many societies, they are active and productive, and serve to create social groups of people with a mutual passion. However, beyond these generic advantages of having university societies, how much do clubs and groups really give back to the student body, campus, and society in general?

Apart from individual charities, religions, and political parties, nothing much of values arises from students’ time and energy. You may say, “how else can students give back?” and you would have a point. Maybe it’s asking too much to expect students to involve themselves in everything. When you actually consider what charitable organisations students join, one may decide to join Amnesty, while another joins Oxfam. Surely this is a good thing, many different charities benefiting from the student generosity? The more charities helped: the more people helped. In reality however, this divides the market. The potential fundraisers or activists who charities are competing for will only choose to be active in a select few organisations.

The main reason for this is that societies communicate via mailing lists, and only very rarely do people sign up for all the charity mailing lists. It might be better to have a system whereby a student signs up to a general group which then notifies them of any major charity events. However, the group itself shouldn’t be directly billed as a charity, so that it doesn’t dominate the market, and those that wish to be committed to any individual charity can still do so. To aid this, the group could perform other functions, to both attract members and to avoid detracting attention from the existing charities.

This concept of an umbrella institution is not so alien. It’s called the Christian Union, and must be praised for it's contribution to campus. The problem though with the Christian Union being this overarching organisation which reaches a large number in order to spread a message of wellbeing, is that it targets a shrinking demographic. There are just not enough Christians on campus to allow the CU to significantly aid the success of all charities. The number of students on campus who are not religious, on the other hand, is very high. If enough of these students could be encouraged to join an inclusive ethically driven organisation, then the reach of all charities could increase by volumes.

No new society could hope to entice all students on to its mailing list, and in doing so make a whole new sphere of undergraduates aware of charity events... but it could try. I propose that the Lancaster University Humanists Association could be the alternative society that attempts to do that. The society represents moral members who wish to discuss issues from ethics to politics, and so would be an ideal system to extend the reach of charities if it were successful. The society is not designed to be a fundraising organisation, but it would be hypocritical of any society that aims to provide an alternative to religion not to take on the positive attributes of those institutions. Religions are seen to be organisations that give to the poor, help the needy, and encourage people to consider a moral code. To a degree humanism can run by that same model; we can aid charities, and encourage the discussion of morality. Without wanting to force any moral code on individuals we can debate issues and invite guest speakers, and through a rational and open discourse each create or refine our own moral codes, and encourage others to reflect on theirs. Moral philosophy should not just be morality for philosophers, but instead should provide the foundations for morality in general society.

Let’s take what religion is perceived to do well: altruism. And show that you can be good for the sake of being good.

“A humanist is someone who does good things even though no one is watching”

Dick McMahon 2004


Adam Henshall
President