The Atheist Blogger

A week ago PZ Myers asked everyone to email the president of UCF to complain / voice concerns over the handling of students Webster Cook and Benjamin Collard. I sent a short email, along with a few other hundred people. Today I received this response:

Thank you for your e-mail.

Laws regarding student privacy prevent us from commenting about
individual UCF students. But, in general terms, when a student allegedly
violates student rules of conduct, his or her student account is placed
on hold.

The student is notified of this action and informed that the hold will
not prevent registration for classes. A student is allowed to register
after making a request to release the hold. The Office of Student
Conduct follows this procedure for any student who is referred to it.

More information about the entire Golden Rule and the student conduct
process is available on our Web site, www.ucf.edu. Please be assured
that UCF is committed to following its standard procedures to ensure
fair outcomes in all student conduct review cases.

Additionally, it is the university’s policy to treat all people with
dignity and respect, without regard to race, creed, color, national
origin, religion, sex, age, disability, marital status, sexual
orientation, veteran status, or political opinions and affiliations.

Amy J. Barnickel
Senior Executive Assistant to the President

From Promise to Prominence:
Celebrating 40 Years

Of course its the standard copy/paste response that was probably sent to everyone, but it’s the last paragraph that confuses me. Firstly I’m happy that Cook and Collard are not going to suffer any setbacks in their education because of this, but the so called “policy” outlined in the last paragraph clearly states

“without regard to race, creed, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, veteran status, or political opinions and affiliations.”

Clearly the university is going against its own policy by regarding the religion of others over the individual. If the policy actually counted for anything, this whole issue would have been brushed aside as “free expression”, the same as any political statement or opinion. The UCF need to stop bowing to demands of evil religious organisations and start thinking of their students.

The forum discussion for Daniel Dennett’s book “Freedom Evolves” is up. Apologies to anyone who went to the live discussion, which I had put an hour later so that Aussie readers could get out of bed. It seems people still thought it was the same time, so I showed up an hour “late” and nobody was there.

Just so everyone knows for future reference, the book club live discussion is now taking place at midnight (UTC+1). So if you go to this world clock website and scroll down, you will see the time written in UTC. When that time is 23:00, it’s time for the discussion!

Voting for Septembers book will take place tomorrow.