Bring the Campaign for Free Expression to Your Campus

 

The Campaign for Free Expression is a CFI initiative to focus efforts and attention on one of the crucial components of freethought, the right of individuals to express their viewpoints, opinions, and beliefs.

For more information about the Campaign, including about the blasphemous phrase contest and the cartoon and student essay contests, go to the Campaign for Free Expression main page.

Timely aspects of the Campaign:

"So, what can my student group do?"

A campus group can participate in a wide range of activities—from lectures and educational presentations to in-your-face blasphemy events—to help challenge complacency and raise awareness about impediments to free expression on campus, at the local and regional level, and worldwide.  Understandably, some of the events below might not fit with the mission of your campus group or with the climate of your campus or community.

Note: Make sure to investigate university regulations before engaging in potentially offensive activities.  You can always publicize and protest harsh or unfair restrictions, but you might want to avoid activities that could result in punishment or de-recognition for your club.

During Banned Books Week:

  • Lecture/Presentation: Invite a school librarian or other speaker to give a presentation on censorship, book banning, blasphemy, and/or free speech.
  • Food for Freethought: The Metro State Atheists at Metropolitan College of Denver came up with this service project idea.  During Banned Books Week, they will give away donated books to students who bring in non-perishable food items to be donated to a food bank.

For Blasphemy Day:

  • Free Speech demonstration in a public area of campus.  Some ideas:
    • 90-Second Megaphone: Anyone can come up and use the megaphone for 90 seconds to say anything, no matter how blasphemous or offensive.  (You could also use a soapbox-style small platform for the speakers.)
    • Post-It Board display: Anyone can come up throughout the day to write on a Post-It note that is then stuck to a display board for the day.
  • Blasphemous Art Display: Partner with the college Art Department, or with art students, and have a blasphemous art show or demonstration in a public area on campus.
  • Blasphemy Game Night: Host a social game night with the games "Blasphemy: The Race to the Cross" and "Playing Gods: The Board Game of Divine Domination"; or, you can create your own Blasphemy Pictionary and Blasphemy Charades.
  • Screening of Monty Python's Life of Brian, an irreverent film that has been banned in some areas for its blasphemous content.
  • Deity Drawing Contest: This is well-suited to tabling in a public area.  Provide basic drawing supplies (crayons, pencils, paper) for a contest where the best drawing of a deity wins a prize!  Drawings can, of course, be of deities like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Zeus, or Cthulu.  Make sure to collect names and contact information for each submission so that the winner can be contacted.
  • Soul Exchange: Invite people to trade their souls for some delicious home-baked cookies.
  • Pascal's Wager Wheel: Create a spinner labeled with different gods.  Then, invite passers-by to spin the wheel to find out which deity Pascal's wager applies to for that person.

For the general Campaign for Free Expression:

  • Bus and Billboard Campaigns: Work in coalition with local groups to sponsor atheist/humanist/secular bus or billboard ads in the community.  Many municipalities and transit authorities have refused to run these ads—find out if they'll fly in your area!  (It's also a good way to attract new members to your group.)
  • Chalking for Reason:
    • Chalk quotes around campus from famous freethinkers, secularists, atheists, etc.
    • Chalk about campus/community free speech concerns (see here and here for examples).
  • Flyering for Free Expression: Research speech restrictions on campus (including in the residence halls).  Create flyers that publicize vague and limiting restrictions on speech through flyering, leading up to possible petitioning and challenging the regulations.

If you have new ideas about ways that campus groups can get involved promoting freedom of expression, send an e-mail to oncampus@centerforinquiry.net, and we'll add it to the list.  And remember, if you are doing a campus event for Blasphemy Day or Banned Books Week that's open to the public, let us know so that we can add it to the campus events calendar and publicize it to your region!

Other informational resources online:

(There's a good list of relevant websites in the downloadable British Council's Freedom of Expression and the Media booklet, pp. 10-13.)

Campaign for Free Expression campus events in the media: