After a series of successful talks, both on Darwin Day and on Living Without God, the Warwick Atheists decided to hold a series of talks articulating some problems with religion and the importance of atheism and secularism within society. I myself gave a talk on the oppression of women by religion. The below poster advertised the talks, and caused... a bit of a ruccus.
The Warwick Atheists Controversy: The Saga.
Let's go through events in chronological order, shall we?
Monday: the "Importance of Atheism" posters are put up.
Wednesday: we receive a cryptic email from Ed Callow, the Welfare and Equal Opportunities Officer, telling us the posters are in the process of being taken down (they're still up, by the way. Good job, Ed) and we'll hear more from him shortly. We don't get this email until after the event, as we were holding the AGM straight before and therefore it wasn't picked up.
Friday: We discuss the email at our meeting, and decide to email Callow and find out exactly where the problem was so we could defend ourselves and, if necessary, apologise. HOWEVER, later that day Sam (our President) was given a letter which told us that the award has been officially revoked as our posters contravened certain equal opportunities clauses (more on that in a second). Then, TEN MINUTES after Sam was given the letter, Callow announces the news on Warwick Radio, and there is even talk about banning us from the Societies Federation.
We had NO opportunity here to defend ourselves, explain or apologise. He conducted a public discussion of the matter on air without us, notifying us about what they're doing rather than consulting with us, and blackening the name of an entire society for one minor infringement.
This is one of the main points of the controversy: SocFed has handled this appallingly. According to their letter, they received complaints about the posters within hours of them going up. WITHIN HOURS. They had ample time to notify us, and all they had to say was "we don't feel your posters are appropriate, please take them down" and guess what? We would done. We'd have grumbled, sure, but we would have taken them down. But no, they wait until Wednesday, the day of the event, and then send us a really vague email that suggests we might get a wrist slap at most, and then they turn around and strip us of our award (which, I may point out, was awarded for the work we had done up until the awards ceremony) and fine us £100. The sheer nerve of doing this to us without giving us any space to put up our side of the story is just unbelieveable.
And secondly, this is yet another in a long line of examples of religion being given a privilege. They do not have a right not to be offended. I'm sorry, but religion is not special, no more than political parties are, and they are not free from criticism. The poster did not target individuals, or even an individual religion-- it was very clearly targeting organised religion, and our criticisms are as valid as their "ridiulous viewpoints". Moreover, the event was an open event-- religious folk were welcome, and indeed invited to attend, and after each talk given there was discussion and questions. It was an entirely open forum, discussing the detrimental nature of some religious views.
Moreover, our posters are always, always, always vetted before they're distributed around campus, because we are wary of causing offense. This particular poster underwent several revisions because we thought it was too provocative. At the most, it means that we made a bad judgement call this one time with this one poster, and we are willing to give a public apology (we're not happy about doing it, but we will). We're on good terms with the key members of every religious society on campus and not one of them felt offended by the poster-- an oversensitive minority who could not deal with a possible questioning of their beliefs has kicked up a fuss.
We're going to appeal, and a load of us are going to talk to Ed Callow on Monday to try and sort this out. We're going to be polite, and we're going to be reasonable. but we're also going to fight this every step of the way.
Bring it on, Callow.
For more accounts of this, see Rokusho and The Chronicler.
Yesterday marked what is easily the best day of my second year of University, and it's a contender for best day for all of University, and indeed, Best Day Ever.
After a lie-in, two very interesting lectures (which are unfortunately becoming a rarity), a Warwick Atheists exec meeting and a screening of Richard Dawkins' The Root of All Evil, the Warwick Atheists trooped off to the society awards. Revelling in our cultish look (courtesy of our lovely white hoodies), we eagerly awaited the announcement of the "Best New Society" award. Things were tense. We contemplated throwing chairs should we lose. The impromptu drumroll on the table died away, and with an announcement of:
"The winner is... WARWICK ATHEISTS."
We set about jumping up and down, cheering and hugging and generally making a nuisance of ourselves. We crowded onto the stage with intermittent cries of, "WHOO!" and "GODLESSNESS!", to claim our novelty cheque and last year's trophy. The Prez gave a speech thanking every God (or similar) that we had been able to list, and we were happy.
I think that requires a 'FUCK YEAH!', and, for tradition's sake, 'GODLESSNESS!'
2009: Best Society award, here we come...
Procrastinating?
Bored?
Need to waste some time?
Get together a few friends and go exploring. Have an adventure. It doesn't matter where-- even if it's just around the town where you live, you'll have a good time. Climb trees or walls, cross bridges, spin around.
I did just that this weekend. The Chronicler, Rokusho and soon-to-be Atheist president Stuart had time to kill whilst waiting for a restaurant table and our quest for cash machines took us further across Coventry than we ever thought possible. And it was damned fun.
So try it. Never let me hear you say you're bored again. There's just no need.
I am sitting in a very tidy room. At least, it is tidy by my definition, which means that the floor is visible and my books, files and papers are arranged in something resembling piles. There is even something of a system behind the piles.
The Process of Room Tidying is an unfortunate side-effect produced by the Giving of Essay Titles, which happens to arts students in the middle of term. Other side-effects include Solitaire Playage, Telephoning Parental Units/Old Friends/Grandparents/Mad Uncle Jay Who Gave You Pot Pourri For Your Last Birthday and Cake Baking. The latter is the most appreciated side-effect and one which is generally encouraged by various housemates and acquaintances. It is a curious phenomenon that a module which is actually rather interesting suddenly becomes the recipient of increasingly volatile insults, and lecture attendance dwindles significantly at this time, as victims of the Giving of Essay Titles begin to pretend that the module in question does not exist.
I have never managed to win out over the procrastination illness, as evidenced by my now fairly tidy room (though I haven't descended into the more perilous grips of the disease, which sees the worsening symptoms of hoovering and dusting), but I have yet to be given any evidence that battling the illness would do my grades any good. It would also give me a much lower status among my classmates, who are drawn together at this time by weary comparison of word counts ("After three hours I checked again, and I'd only written ten words. I think Word is broken."), which symptoms they've fallen prey to, and whether or not they can get away with quoting from non-existent source texts. During this collective despair, the person who is not only over halfway through their essay but has actually done some significant research is shunned. On a course of a mere twenty-five people (at the best of times), this is a shunning that is obvious even to outsiders.
So I sit in my tidy room, Beethoven playing on iTunes (this is Culture, folks) with solitaire open (thus far I have won five out of twenty-three games) and I am contemplating changing my facebook status to something amusing. I have read one hundred pages of The Virginian and, if I don't look at the pile of books beside my laptop, I can almost convince myself that this is productive. I will regret this in the weeks to come, when I will sit up until four a.m. laboriously typing meaningless phrases in a vain attempt to reach the word count, and I shall ignore phonecalls from my friends asking me whether I've died as I haven't emerged to socialise in days. But I will make it to the other side, triumphantly handing in my 5000 words on the European Novel, and I shall toast my amazing ability to get my work completed.
Now, I think I have cake ingredients in my kitchen cupboards...
Yesterday it was brought to my attention that it is about a week since I last posted here, and this is apparently not good enough. I don't actually have anything much to write about; I'm very tired as I hosted a house party last night, I have a lot of work I've not done even though I have had a week off from lectures due to the glory that is reading week, and I have a rather large pile of washing up sitting precariously by my kitchen sink.
I had actually planned on my next few posts here being art-related. I used to draw and sketch a lot, and I even painted at times, but I fell out of practice last year. For Christmas my grandmother gave me sketchbooks and pencils and related arty things, so I've been getting back into it. I've got lecture doodles, I've got stick figures, I've got actual drawings, generally of either my friends or horses, and I thought it would be interesting to stick them on the blog. But alas! alack! I do not have a scanner so that plan will have to wait.
So instead I'm going to pimp out a link. If, like me, you're a fan of Lost and haven't given up on it because it's 'too confusing', then you'll enjoy Lost Recap Rock. I spent the majority of Friday humming 'We are the Oceanic Six' to myself, which somehow lent another level of enjoyment to this week's really rather good episode.
Sometime in the future I may have something to blog about. I may have sometihng to rant about, or to ponder, or just to wank on about at length. Right now, however, I am just tired. I'm going to put on some Jack Jonson, make myself some pasta-based food and live up to the unfair stereotype of a lazy arts student.
I don't even have to hoover now, as the magnificent Ben just did it for me. My ability to be productive dwindles ever further. Maybe tomorrow I shall be revitalised. But I doubt it.
I quite admire people who can traverse the tricky terrains of relationships in a relatively pain-free manner. It's something I've never quite managed myself. The politics of dating passed me by in secondary school and it's only really at University that I've found myself faced with the related complexities.
The problem seems to be that no one knows what they want, myself included. Or myself especially it appears at times. In my first year at Uni I started a relationship with one of the guys on my hallway, and it was good. It was fun, we had very few disagreements and everything was all rosey for a while. However a series of circumstances led to us living together this year, our second year, and suddenly I began to feel rather trapped-- I still can't quite conceive why, but I did. Suddenly everything was 'serious'; we had moved in together, rather than simply being allocated rooms on the same stretch of carpet, and then he told me in passing that he could see himself marrying me.
Stop. Right there.
I like the idea of a serious, deep, meaningful relationship. I'd love to fall in love, to have a happily ever after. I think most people would, wouldn't they? But I'm also a bit of a cynic, and I'm scared. I do occasionally daydream of a guy showing up at my door and, in a Love Actually-esque gesture, holding up signs saying how much he loves me. That would be awesome. But finding myself in my first real relationship, being told that, "I think I'd quite like to marry you someday" was just too much for my inexperienced, naive self.
Towards the end of the first term of the second year, I was becoming increasingly more unhappy and concerned by all this, and I ended the relationship. It was painful and sad, but we're getting through it. We're still friends, we're planning on living together next year as well, and I'm putting this down to good experience.
Why am I writing about this? Well, because it seems you can't win. I'm now incredibly worried about getting into a serious relationship, not because I don't want one, but because I'm convinced it will go wrong again. Because what went wrong before wasn't the guy, it was me, and I don't want to hurt another perfectly wonderful guy because I can't cope.
My answer to this was to go casual. But I don't know what constitutes casual, so where does the line get drawn? Casual relationships tend to be categorised as being for people who have loose morals, who don't care about the people they're with and who have no interest whatsoever in love or commitment or decency or any of those other good moral things, and this is distinctly unfair. It should be considered that maybe, just maybe, some people want casual relationships because they know they're not ready for a serious relationship, or because they've had a bad experience, or even because they want fun with no strings attached-- there's nothing wrong with that, either!
In the last few months I know I've probably hurt more feelings than I would ever want to, simply because I've been confused and working out what I want. I'd quite like not to be judged for this-- it's not that I'm a bitch, it's just that I found the cliffs and trenches of relationships very difficult to find my way through.
I still hope someone will give me a hand one day.
A few days ago I was collapsed on my friend’s sofa whilst sozzled when she poked me rather excitedly. “We should go naughty underwear shopping!” was what she said. I’m afraid that I may have agreed to this, and am quite glad that I’ve managed to escape to University for a little while. I’ve never done anything remotely like that, mainly because at least eighty per cent of my friends are blokes, who don't usually go in for that sort of thing. At least, this is the reason I give myself.
It’s not that I’m averse to naughty underwear. I’m just averse to my having any place near it. Or in it. My friend thinks that it will help me to “score”, which puzzles me slightly. After all, people will only see my underwear when outer layers are removed, which suggests scoring is imminent. I like to think that I am rather open about sex. I don’t particularly mind talking about it, knowing about it or, indeed, having it. Despite this I am beginning to think that I am, in fact, a bit of a prude.
I have been told that I’m “a bit too British” at times. Apparently this means that I drink too much tea, refuse to discuss my feelings at length or in depth and am occasionally given to getting drunk and starting fights with inanimate objects, as well as being rather prudish. The person that told me this is an American, so I’m inclined to think she doesn't know what she's talking about. This casual prejudice is “a bit too British” as well, according to her. Well, I’m quite happy being like that, just like I’m happy with my relationship with sex, and the lack of naughty underwear.
I can foresee what this inevitable shopping trip will be like. My friend will be very excited and tell me at length what her boyfriend likes, which is very awkward as he is one of my oldest and best friends, and then she will proceed to throw ridiculously thin or frilly garments at me. I will shuffle my feet, bite my nails and put on my stiff upper lip, until I am eventually worn down by her enthusiasm, buy something and then never, ever dare wear it.
The thing is, I’ve never seen the point in lacy, frilly or barely existent underwear. Speaking as someone who spends a lot of her free time on horseback, generally at high speed (often Horse’s idea, not mine), it just strikes me as rather pointless and occasionally painful, right about the moment it wedges itself where the sun does not shine. I also don’t think it needs to play any part in sex, because generally it doesn’t. Maybe I’m missing the point.
At least I have learnt one thing: when sprawled drunkenly across a friend's sofa do not, under any circumstance, agree to anything. That way you will avoid any problematic deliberations on lacy garments and life will remain simple and, yes, quite Britishly prudish.
Welcome, hopefully-gentle readers. As I am fairly new to this blogging lark, I shall begin with a rumination on another lark I am fairly new to. Namely, wine-tasting.
Now, I am a student, and as such I have consumed a decent amount of alcohol in the year and a half that I have been at University. I have always been partial to a glass of wine: it is a drink that will get you nicely tipsy but will also give the illusion, if only to yourself, that you are actually rather sophisticated. Recently I decided that cracking the code of wine might assist in this illusion as well as provide me with another level of snobbery to add to my rapidly expanding repertoire. So yesterday evening, after joining the Wine and Whisky Appreciation Society, I headed off to campus to begin my education.
Initially it was rather daunting. My friends and I sat down at a long table which rather resembled what one would see in an executive board meeting (the range of wines and wine glasses excepted), and pored over the sheets of 'tasting terms' and 'aroma and flavour characteristics'. These seemed to suggest that wine could taste like leather or wet wool, neither of which I can admit to having tasted before. It can also, somewhat worryingly, taste 'meaty'. I think I would feel more comfortable with some specificity here, as 'meaty' is something I have come to associate with the more dubious 2 a.m. kebab shop visits.
Nevertheless we dutifully listened to the Wine Expert telling us about the various wines we would be tasting, as well as explaining what 'vertical tasting' is (just so you know, it's comparing the same wine from different vintages, rather than different wines from the same vintage which is, shockingly enough, 'horizontal tasting'). Then we began to hold our glasses up to the light, debate the difference between 'lemon-green' and 'lemon' and to stick our noses in the glass with a hearty sniff. It was all jolly good fun, though at first I'll admit to being able to say nothing more than "fruity" or "sweet", which is apparently impossible to smell. As we progressed through the four types of wine however, we developed rather more ability, or so it seemed. It is debateable as to whether we were smelling and tasting that much better or whether we were just becoming more adept at bullshitting. The tastes of petrol, pepper, smoke and Wimbledon were starting to come through and we were beginning to fancy ourselves as sophisticates.
After two hours of this I am looking forward to developing this knowledge. I will soon delight in sitting in restaurants expertly swirling my wine glass and, after a thoughtful sip and significant pause, pronouncing the wine to have a rather burnt aftertaste with a hint of liquorice on the tongue. Or some other such bollocks.
Yesterday was, as my fellow newbie wine-taster said, the beginning of a very expensive lifelong habit. And I plan to enjoy it.
