This article was written by Andrew Garber, a member of Fellowship of Non-Religious Students of Indiana State University. Reprinted with Permission; original article here.

In the fall of 2010, I had no idea what a group of non-believers would talk about at a meeting.  Yet when a good friend of mine approached me with the idea to start a student organization for atheists, agnostics, secularists, free-thinkers, humanists and pastafarians, I was intrigued and excited.  We talked about why such a group was needed, and within a few weeks, we had drafted a constitution and began to form what would eventually become the Fellowship of Non-Religious Students of Indiana State University.

It didn’t take long for us to see the many advantages of aligning the group with a nationally recognized umbrella organization.  I contacted the Secular Student Alliance, who quickly came beside us to help organize and support our fledgling organization.  The SSA provided startup manuals, tabling supplies, and even a speaker board that enabled us to bring in speakers at little to no cost. 

This article was written by Drew Pruitt, a member of the Secular Student Alliance at UNLV.

It had never occurred to us to go the SSA national leadership conference. We knew about it - we'd been getting Lyz's emails for two years letting us know about it, but it never even came up as something to do. Our group is in Vegas, Ohio is a million miles away, and we all have our own summer plans. If it hadn't been for a personal email from Nick Stancato, letting us know he'd love to meet us and that he really wanted our group to be there, we would not have gone this year, either. And we would have had no clue what we'd been missing.

As it turns out, sending three of our leaders to this conference was the single best thing we've done for the group. There are a number of reasons the conference was fantastic - any one of the by itself make it worth going.

This is an exciting time for the SSA! With our affiliate count growing exponentially (we have over 350 now!), we are expanding the staff as well so we can handle all of our growth!

This article was written by members at the SSA at University of Central Florida, reprinted with permission from reason Against.

If the future rests in the hands of the youth, then it should be duly noted that today’s youth are distinctly progressive. No, I’m not referring to the widely publicized Occupy movement, instead I’m referring to the values of my generation. There has been no better time for the LGBT community; constantly winning small and large cases for political and social rights. Government, laws, policies, all of the things past generations have accepted are now being scrutinized and challenged as we defend our interests. The issue of abortion and the debate on whether or not it should be a government issue has received an abundance of attention from today’s voters. Education’s stance as a right or a privilege has spread like fire throughout schools as students take up the call to act. Students are demanding that their voices not only be heard but that action is taken to accommodate the masses. However, we should return to the word “progressive,” which by definition as a noun means “a person advocating or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas” but as a verb means “happening or developing gradually or in stages; proceeding step by step” (Google Dictionary). Although revolutionary, these victories are but small steps towards a better tomorrow.