First Amendment Society provides open discussion

The First Amendment Society, a fairly new student organization, gives students the opportunity to participate in open, educated, civilized debates, mostly regarding the First Amendment rights.

FAS President Jamie Howard said, “No matter who you are, we are completely indiscriminant in our membership.”

However, Howard expects FAS will initially be comprised mostly of honor students from Assistant Director of the Honors & Scholars Program Dr. Robert “Spike” Viau’s honors classes.

FAS considers itself a spur off of the former debate team, which has dwindled and disappeared in recent years but used to be popular among incoming honor students.

All three of the groups founding members, not including Viau, its faculty advisor, are practicing Wiccans.

“Most of us are interested in practicing Wicca,” Howard said. FAS’s ties to Wicca date back to an internet group called “GC&SU Pagans,” a group that meets on the first Wednesday of every month at Kuroshika Japan restaurant to talk about issues in the news and in society.

Howard said people interested in membership should bear in mind that FAS has no religious affiliation.

Howard pointed out the group’s flagship symbol, a purple button with the word “coexist” written on it in various religious and nonreligious symbols from around the world.

Sizemore is not sure how many pagans are on campus.

“They are still in the campus broom closet,” Sizemore said.

Members of FAS are likely to find out if there are at least a few more pagans out there when the organization has its first meeting, fittingly in October.

“We’ve got all these religious organizations around campus. We feel like the non-Christian opinion is not getting voiced,” Howard said.

“A lot of people use religious books to back up their arguments, but we try to use secular evidence,” Sizemore said, reminding people of the group’s foundation on debate team principals, which include using logic as the groundwork of an argument.

“It’s just that it’s something that is badly needed around this campus, which I think has a kind of sharp conservative edge to it,” Viau said. “I frankly think it’s, in some way, kind of repressive in its attitude.”

Viau’s father worked at a military base during Vietnam. As a young adult, Viau protested outside.

When asked if she would be willing to go to church with Christian members of her organization, Howard offered a hesitant yes.

“We would accept that [going to church] if they would be willing to go to a circle or a mosque,” Howard said.

“What we need is something distinctly refreshing with a kind of open policy, a policy to embrace rather than exclude. One that wants to kind of open people’s minds rather than close them or narrow them within the confines of one particular faith system or common theology,” Viau said, then leaned back in his chair, taking the weight off his black New Balances and black jeans.

Howard remembered her first day in Viau’s honors “Utopia Dystopia” class, when the syllabus was read out loud.

The syllabus read, “You are DIVERSE. Respect diversity, respect differences of opinion, or you have no business in higher education. Be willing to defend your own beliefs, or remain ignorant. Strive to be comfortable in a morally and intellectually ambiguous world, or remain trapped in the mindset of a sit-com or morality play. Get along. You are a microcosm. Your own petty squabbles and jealousies, at the global level, become wars.”

That kind of open-minded attitude, Howard feels, is a good thing for society, especially at a conservative university like GC&SU.

“More of our students need to start thinking for themselves,” Viau said.

The goal of the FAS is just that, to peacefully bridge the gap between different types of students through “open, educated, civilized debate” with no agenda and no discrimination.

FAS’s first activity will be a fund-raiser selling the “coexist” buttons and asking those who wear them to be silent for the day (outside of class) to reflect on what our country would be like without the First Amendment. The money raised will be donated to a charity for domestic violence victims.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 9 2005. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry