Couch Surfing at the 2012 Global Atheist Convention
// January 24th, 2012 // 1 Comment » // Announcement, Couch Surfing, Global Atheist Convention
The 2012 Global Atheist Convention is rapidly approaching and many students from around Australia are looking for a place to stay in Melbourne. The Freethought University Alliance is coordinating a couch surfing arrangement to provide students from around the country with a free place to sleep each night of the convention. With the price of registration and travel combined, the cost to attend the convention is already a challenge for many students. However, your kind offer of free accommodation for the weekend could make all the difference. If you as a fellow student, or a member of the atheist community have the ability to open up your home for a University student from elsewhere in Australia, we’d love to hear from you. Just fill out the form on our “Got a Couch?” page and we’ll be in contact with you when we have someone who may wish to stay with you.
If you are a University student from regional Victoria or interstate you can fill out the form on our “Need a Couch?” page. We will do our best to find you someone to stay with in Melbourne who is attending the convention.
“Got a Couch?”
“Need a Couch?”
Please know that we cannot guarantee accommodation for anyone. Even the matching of individuals does not guarantee accommodation. We are just facilitating the swapping of contact details, the final decision concerning whether or not to stay with an individual in Melbourne or to have an interstate student stay with you is your decision. As such we suggest you should ensure you are comfortable with the situation by corresponding via numerous means such as email, telephone, or Skype.
Student Leadership Conference 2012
// November 11th, 2011 // No Comments » // Announcement
It’s official!
We’ll be hosting a Student Leadership Conference on the eve of the Global Atheist Convention at the Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre on April 13, 2012.
More details, including registration, to be announced soon.
Subscribe to our Newsletter and we’ll keep you posted.
Skepticamp at the University of Melbourne
// October 22nd, 2011 // No Comments » // Events
SkeptiCamps are informal, community-organized conferences borne from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. Everyone from casual skeptics to the experienced participate, give talks and get to know each other. Above, members of the University of Melbourne Secular Society outside the Redmond Barry Lecture Theatre, where they co-hosted Melbourne Skepticamp this weekend. The event follows a Australia’s first Skepticamp held in Sydney earlier in the year. A third Skepticamp will be held on the regional coast of Victoria in January next year. The Melbourne event has broken all previous attendance records in the history of Skepticamps, with over 150 people attending. To find out more information about Skepticamp Open Events head to http://www.skepticamp.com/
Freethought University Alliance at the 2012 Global Atheist Convention
// August 28th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Announcement
- Free 3-day passes for student leaders
- Travel and accommodation grants
- Student Leaders Conference
We’re excited to share with you that the Atheist Foundation of Australia has launched a student grant initiative which will offer an initial 10 free tickets to the 2012 Global Atheist Convention to the Freethought University Alliance.
The Global Atheist Convention, to be held in Melbourne in April 2012, boasts an impressive line-up of world renowned speakers including Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and many, many more.
The Freethought University Alliance will be allocating the free tickets to the 10 most active affiliated groups located outside of Victoria.
This list includes the following groups:
- Australian National University League of Extraordinary Atheists
- University of Newcastle Atheist Society
- Macquarie University Atheists League
- University of Wollongong Secular Freethinkers
- University of Sydney Atheist Society
- James Cook University Society of Atheist Philosophy
- University of Tasmania Atheists
- Bond University Rationalists, Skeptics and Thinkers
- Griffith University Skeptics and Freethinkers
- University of Western Australia Atheist and Skeptic Society
Allocation of the tickets will be at the discretion of the group, and decided upon by their own student committee. This could include competitions, fundraisers or splitting the costs of one ticket between a group of students to offer each student a small discount.
It is possible that a second round of grants may be announced at a later date, and it is our hope that we will be able to offer a free pass to every affiliated group with the Freethought University Alliance who are located outside of Victoria.
Travel and Accommodation Grants
Additionally, thanks to generous donations from organisations and individuals, the Freethought University Alliance will be offering a limited number of travel and accommodation grants for additional assistance to any student traveling from interstate. The allocation of such grants will be subject to availability and expressions of interest can be sent to scottsharrad@freethoughtalliance.org.au.
Student Leaders Conference
Finally, we would like to announce that the Freethought University Alliance has commenced planning for a “student leaders’ conference” to be held as part of a fringe event to the Global Atheist Convention. This will include lunch, workshops, student panels and guest speakers and take place on Friday 13th April 2012. We encourage students traveling from interstate to consider planning their itinerary to arrive on Friday morning or Thursday evening if they wish to take part in this event.
We will endeavour to keep registration for this event at a low cost to ensure it is accessible to all students attending the Global Atheist Convention.
Meet the organisers of Think Inc
// August 18th, 2011 // No Comments » // Events
The Freethought University Alliance is proud to be partnered with Think Inc – a one day science and rationalism conference to be held in Melbourne on September 18th this year. The event will be hosted by Josh Thomas and headlined by Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson with a host of other big names speaking including Christopher Hitchens and Ayaan Hirsi Ali via a video link. The theme for the conference is “In the next 10 years what does the world need to do to survive and flourish”.
Jason Ball, President of the Freethought University Alliance, sat down to have a chat with Think Inc organisers Sean Kwan, Desh Amila and James Gallichio (above). This is what went down.
JB: Thanks for joining me guys – can I start by asking what’s the motivation behind organising Think Inc?
SK: For me, it was very much about looking for a reason to bring down some of my heroes. I’ve spent countless hours on youtube listening and watching Neil deGrasse Tyson and Christopher Hitchens speak.
JG: What’s more, we wanted to do our part to help promote some of the things we’re really passionate about. We’re three young guys who want to live in a smarter, more rational society. Bringing some of the world’s best minds to Melbourne to discuss the future of the planet is our small attempt at advancing that cause.
SK: Yeah… that too.
DA: The concept for Think Inc was to create a conference unlike other conferences with themes in science or rationalism. I’d been to some in the past and personally found them to be a little too dragged out and repetitive. Drawing from my background in entertainment we conceptualised a conference similar in style to a mainstream music event – an intellectual big day out, if you will. I really want to see a diverse and much younger crowd attend the Think Inc conference.
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Fiona Patten – Victorian Campus Tour
// July 26th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Events
The Freethought University Alliance are proud to be presenting the newest face in Australian politics across three campuses next month. Fiona Patten is founder and Convenor of the Australian Sex Party, and has had 20 years experience in advocating and lobbying for the rights of adult retailers, sex workers, HIV/AIDS groups and online businesses.
In 2000 she published a listing of all paedophile priests in Australia under the title of Hypocrites, which became the basis of a Four Corners program and the beginning of a more widespread movement against organised religion and sex crimes.
In 2008, frustrated and deeply disappointed with the increasing wowserism of the major parties, she decided to set up a political party dedicated to civil liberties, personal freedoms and curbing religious influence.
Averaged across all states, the Australian Sex Party outpolled the four religious parties at the last federal election, coming in fourth place in the Senate election. In the last Victorian State election she missed out on an upper house seat by a mere 3,000 votes.
You may remember her from a now infamous debate on national TV, where she went head to head with Family First and Australian Christian Lobby state director Wendy Francis on Sunrise, which took place before the 2010 Federal Election.
Fiona is also the latest edition to the stellar line up of speakers presenting at next year’s Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne.
All speaking events are free and open to the public.
1:00pm Wednesday 3rd August
Lowe Theatre, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
Hosted by the University of Melbourne Secular Society
RSVP on Facebook
12:30pm Thursday 4th August
University Function Room, RMIT
Hosted by the RMIT Secular Society
RSVP on Facebook.
6:30pm Friday 5th August
Rotunda Building, MONASH UNIEVRSITY
Hosted by Rationalist Association of Monash
RSVP on Facebook.
Students encouraged to mark “No Religion”
// July 18th, 2011 // No Comments » // Media Release
The Freethought University Alliance will be working together with the Atheist Foundation of Australia and the Rationalist Society of Australia to encourage University students to mark “No Religion” on the 2011 Census, if they are not religious.
For many young people, the next Census will be their first, and thus it is crucial to provide useful information as to how to correctly complete the census, and also inform about how the data is used, particularly the optional question on religion.
The Freethought University Alliance will be coordinating efforts across its 23 affiliated campus groups, providing literature, posters and stickers to be dispensed during mid-year orientation carnivals and festivals over the next few weeks.
The campaign’s focus will include:
- that marking the religion of your parents or that of the school you attended when you are not actually religious can lead to inflated figures for religion.
- that conservative religious lobby groups use census data to hold an uneven influence over political parties, and have contributed to the lack of progress on some social issues including gay marriage, euthanasia and abortion, as well as the funding of education.
More information can be found at http://censusnoreligion.org
Join the 15,000+ strong “Mark No Religion” Facebook event
To get a free “Mark No Religion” Census pack sent to your campus group, please email jasonball@freethoughtalliance.org.au
For media contact: 0407781406.
Student Spotlight: OJ Lesslar
// May 14th, 2011 // No Comments » // Student Spotlight
My journey began in late 2009. In first-year medical school I became friends with Ingrid, an exchange student from Norway, and it wasn’t long before we discovered a similar passion; a passion for Dawkins.
I had previously sealed the deal on my journey to atheism with The God Delusion. The process from hardcore Catholic to Sunday Christian to agnostic to atheist had taken a good ten years. It had been a part-time job but I collected my pay in full at the end, and I was free of the shackles of guilt, superstition and ignorance. I had to forge my own path now, after all, if bad things happened to me, I had to step up to the plate, take ownership and orchestrate my own salvation/escape plan!
I’d always been a general big-mouth – public speaking champion, debating captain, school politician, even stand-up comic… so it was a win for the side of reason when I jumped fence, if I do say so myself. Ingrid is from secular Norway and hadn’t grown up with any religious influences, so was surprised that atheism was a “movement” and not the norm. She is a reddit fan and cheeky hoarder of irreverent internet posters that satire religion and the status quo, and she has also amassed a winning collection of ‘fail’ cartoons! Ingrid’s undergraduate degree is in biomed and she is a rare breed of scientist, skeptic and hot babe – the devil likes p-values!
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There’s more than one Kylie touring the country…
// May 10th, 2011 // 4 Comments » // Events
click to enlarge
Kylie Sturgess is an award-winning blogger and independent podcast host of The Token Skeptic Podcast. A Philosophy and Religious Education teacher with over ten years experience in education, Kylie has lectured on teaching critical thinking, feminism, new media and anomalistic beliefs worldwide. She is a Member of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) Education Advisory Panel and regularly writes editorial for numerous publications, and has spoken at The Amazing Meeting Las Vegas, Dragon*Con (US), QED Con (UK) and was the MC for the 2010 Global Atheist Convention.
The Freethought University Alliance are proud to be coordinating Kylie’s Victorian Tour. You’ll find her on campuses across Melbourne as well at the new Melbourne Skeptics in the Pub. Check out the listings below to find your nearest free event. Each talk has it’s own Facebook event, so make sure your RSVP and invite your friends to come along too:
Thursday 12th May: University of Melbourne Secular Society
“Fleeced – The Rise And Fall of a Aries’ Belief In Astrology”
1:00pm Harold White Lecture Theatre – Arts Centre, University of Melbourne
Facebook RSVP
Friday 13th May: Rationalist Association of Monash
“Very Superstitious – From Crossing Fingers To Friday The Thirteenth”
6:30pm, R1 Rotunda, Monash University
Facebook RSVP
Monday 16th May: RMIT Secular Society
“Feminine Intuition, Pseudoscience And How To Be More ‘Skep-chic’”
2:30pm, University Function Room, Building 8 Level 2, RMIT
Facebook RSVP
Monday 16th May: Melbourne Skeptics in the Pub
“Skeptical Books With Embiggen – feat. Warren Bonnett & Kylie Sturgess”
6:30pm, Mt View Hotel, 70 Bridge Rd, Richmond
Facebook RSVP