So while waiting for my borohydride yesterday I decided to start a chapter of this organization at my school (the University of Utah).
This is their homepage. So far I'm not sure if I'll get funding but I'm really motivated to get it started; I know there's a community of secular students here just waiting to be tapped. But first I have a few questions about what I should do here. Please don't just tell me to look on their website because I've done that and would like to know what you think personally. Any student organization management experience would also be great. Some questions:
1) What are some non-atheistic activities that you could recommend? I'm not a "theism is a mental disease"-type of atheist so I'd hate to drive anybody away and intend for at least some activities/meetings to not be religion-related.
2) Further, what are some atheistic activities that I can do? I'll be sure to do an "ask an atheist/agnostic" student panel, several debates, a few films, etc., but do you guys have any other ideas? I'm not going to go proselytizing, but I intend to draw my group members around something, so something of this sort is necessary.
3) Though the Univ. of Utah is a public school, about 50% of its students are Mormons, and many more are also quite religious, though I'm sure I could get a few non-theists to join. Should I make events highly public? What level of advertising should there be? It's not that I'm afraid of the religious majority but I'd just rather not have them involved; I know several other organization leaders have received death threats in other schools, so maybe it's better off as a small organization. What do you think?
4) Any general tips? Anything I should look out for? In the organization's constitution, it states that all students may vote. Is this policy at risk of allowing theists to vote on the direction of the organization? Is there any way I can prevent this? I can't outright say "you have to have serious doubts about religion to join", because that would be discriminatory and my school doesn't allow that, but surely there's another way to get around this potential problem.