SAFE in The Cardinal

[Devin Spaulding]

I was interviewed Friday in regards to faith-based student
organizations on campus. I was asked several questions about our
group and my opinions on the various religious groups on campus. The
article runs in tomorrow's edition but I have not seen an advance
copy; I don't know what will be in it. I do know that it will be the
main article on the front page and will likely make our group more
visible. Some examples of questions were why did I start this group,
who is allowed in the group, what our group represents, my opinions on
the diversity of the religious groups on campus, what I felt about the
religious diversity, etc. I believe the article will be interesting.
I wasn't given the actual topic of the article but it sounds like it
may be a review of the various religious (or, in our case, non-
religious) groups the campus has to offer and what can be gained from
them. I could be way off since the questions didn't seem like they
were directed at us but more like we were being included in the survey
of groups. I suspect we were contacted because we are listed under
the religious section of organizations despite me NOT putting it under
that category.

Other news is that the Friday time is not working out. I am thinking
of pushing our meetings up to Wednesday. Our next meeting is in two
weeks so I have plenty of time to work out a time and location. I'm
hoping to keep the time and location but just move the day of the
week. Check back periodically to see if the meeting schedule has been
updated. Related to this, if the Cardinal publishes it, is that our
meeting times will be incorrect in the paper. I told the author that
our times will be changing and I hope he reflects that in the
article. SO, if you see our old times listed, please NOTE that those
times are now defunct and my next message about meeting times will be
the correct times.

--Devin Spaulding

[Devin Spaulding]

Ok, not a bad article at all. However, I was quoted as saying, "It is
very important to have a particular faith at this time in your life,
but it is tragic to lock yourself in without exploring what it
means." Not sure if I really said this because I'd never say "It is
important to have a particular faith." I think he misunderstood when
I was talking about how that it may be important to have a particular
faith at this time in your life but not exploring it would be tragic.
In fact, my personal stance is that you can believe if you want but
being bullied into it is no way to go about it. It may be the author
was trying to get at the idea that perusing the various groups would
be a good idea to explore your faith or lack thereof as in the case of
our group. When I was interviewed, many of the questions seemed
geared to my opinions on the faith groups and it's members and less
about how our group is opposite of that. I'll be posting an op ed
piece for the next paper about the article and the quote.

I wrote this so that you all would know that I don't expect people to
be religious and won't be telling people to be or not be. Those who
know me realize this, of course, but new members or those who don't
know me well may not realize this.

--Devin Spaulding

[Devin Spaulding]

I didn't see where there was an op-ed option for the Cardinal so I
asked for 2 corrections to be made in the paper. The Cardinal doesn't
seem too reader friendly by not posting letters to the editor as a
normal paper would. You can write letters to the editor but I have
never seen any published nor is there a section in the paper for
such. Hopefully, the corrections will be enough.

--Devin