Secular Portal Blogs

Pub crawl

Monday, September 29th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Speaking of freshers’ week events, Thursday was the pub crawl, a bit of a good old fashioned social to introduce the new members to the society.

Not that our new member turn out was particuarly impressive, it wasn’t, and it certainly wasn’t what we hoped for but they came none the less. More importantly in the end, plenty of existing members turned up and had a great night by all accounts. I’m glad someone did.

We made it through The Old Bar, The Fenton, Dry Dock, Bourbon, Courtyard and Weatherspoon’s before finally being stopped by a very closed Bar Censsa. I mean, who the hell is closed on freshers’ week? Apparently quite a few places. Town was dead for what you would think would be the busiest week of the year. Still, that just got us served faster .

Make your own god

Monday, September 29th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Wednesday saw the arrival of the long awaited Make Your Own God event.

It went really well to be honest. We got a rather large collection of home made gods in the end and signed up a fair few members too. Not to mention the debate that was sparked surrounding the event.

I’m looking forward to running the event again in the future.

Intro Week Ends

Friday, September 26th, 2008 | Leeds Atheist Society | No Comments

What a week!

As always Intro Week has lived up to its billing of high octane action, the consumption of large quantities of alcohol and the sight of campus filled with fresh faced (or not deppending on what they up to the night before) students looking to sign up for the massive variety of societies on campus.

A-Soc was one of those societies and for only our second Intro Week we managed to attract our fair share of new members. In fact we have doubled our membership since this time last year!

Well done to all those that manned the stall all week and welcome to all our new members.

Finally, just a reminder that our Intro Meeting is taking place on Tuesday 30th September at 7pm in the ARC. We will be introducing the society and our events for the coming year and it is the ideal opportunity to get that first stamp on your membership cards! Don't worry if you don't have one yet, membership is still open. Catch up with a committee member and get signed up!

A-Soc Intro Week

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 | Norman Ralph | No Comments

It’s that time of year again, that period of time when Leeds fills with fresh faced eighteen years and every commercial body is out in force trying to get everyone to part with their hard earned cash. It is also the time when we societies get out there to try and get members.

A-soc is no different and we have been out in force this week recruiting. We have been pretty successful too, with over 40 new members signing up in the first three days! Check out the pictures below and the blogs over on the A-Soc website .

More censorship at LUU

Saturday, September 20th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

One thing I think is worth commenting on is the situation regarding Leeds Unviersity Union when el presidente Norman submitted some events to the events calendar for Atheist Society.

You see, apparently, they turned us down. Apparently events such as “make your own god” may reflect badly on the union. Whereas, I guess, they have already taken the abuse for censoring anyone connected with the union resulting in at least one front page of Leeds Student.

This is a clear freedom of speech invasion with no real reason, the event is not in any way negative (it’s a fun craft day) and does not target one specific religion. This will certainly be added to our ongoing discrimination complaint which the union have apparently burried as the new societies officer has never heard of it.

New website part II

Saturday, September 20th, 2008 | Leeds Atheist Society | No Comments

The remaining updates to the website have gone live today. Most of this is backend tools to allow the committee to manage the society but we also have big changes for members too.

You can now join online and log into your members' account which gives you access to your profile and the members directory!

International Freshers’ Fair

Saturday, September 20th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Yesterday was International Freshers’ Fair, a chance for international students to find out about the societies at LUU. It was quite busy, much better than last year and as usual we had an interesting placement. We had ISoc to our left and the CU just down from them. Plus the Irish Society were on the same table and apparently asked to be moved!

Our banners seemed to work well, they were the tallest their (with ISoc just coming in behind us) and we did very well for representation - we had 7 of us there, 5 of which were in t-shirts or hoodies so I think we had the best coordination going.

George is just a number

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

The final A-Soc social of the summer ended on a rather good note with 17 people turning up. We were yet again screwed over by the union but never the less things proceeded well with us re-grouping in The Old Bar for a night of good fun that didn’t end until gone midnight.

Especially given Nicola and Zoltan were at a gig, Moz is in Europe, Rich is missing in action, Bo was on a date, Gijsbert has just disappeared, Brett couldn’t make it down, Rosie is in America Bevis couldn’t make it either. These are just A-Soc hardcores if you also add people like Oli, Chinese Matt and Charlie we did fantastic to say so many people weren’t there.

Roll on freshers’ week!

The usual morning after

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Last night saw another A-Soc summer social. I arrived for the commitee meeting to find the union was locked down for a commerical event, of course, they didn’t bother to let us know. Not only could we not get in The Terrace but they actually closed down the front of the union and just presumed people would find their way to The Old Bar. Luckily the bouncer was kind enough to point people in our direction so it wasn’t a total write off.

We archived a nice healthy 16 people to the meeting and the preceeding committee meeting was attended by twice as many commitee members as last week so things looked fairly good. I think we’ll chalk another line on the old success tally for this week.

Podcast officially launches

Friday, September 5th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

The early hours of Friday morning saw my new podcast launch onto the world wide web!

The first episode recorded by myself, Moz, Liz and Fonze is, as with all the episodes, officially about “religion” nut completely off topic constantly. From now on a new episode will appear each Friday and judging my the standards of last night they are going to get better and better as we go along.

You can find the podcast on my website and there is also an RSS feed so you can subscribe with RSS readers, iTunes, etc.