Posts Tagged ‘Leeds Atheist Soc’

Tuesday saw the long awaited Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster at A-Soc. We got another fairly decent attendance, about 30 people or so turned up in the end I think. We got quite a few new members down again so hopefully they weren’t too freaked out that having been their first meeting 😀 .

The event itself went fairly well, it all seemed to happen so fast at the time though according to the time stamp on the camera it actually went on for about 40 minutes. The video will be up on YouTube as soon as a I get some free time to sort it.

We haven’t really had a post mortem discussion about it yet but it is definitely something that we want to repeat in the future.

Friday night saw the long awaited return of One Life.

We managed 13 people to the session which was a fairly respectable number and it was rather amusing to be just down the hallway from the Christian Union’s Friday Night Live (now re-named to Ignite I believe). The food that Norm cooked based on Sophie’s excellently prepared menu was excellent and we got some good discussions going. Another event to chalk down as a success I recon.

It’s not easy being popular. A-Soc had moved of meeting room 4 because we weren’t sure we could fit everyone in as it only holds around ten people. We were right. Especially when 45 people turned up to A-Soc last night :D.

We had a lot on, a committee meeting, Norm’s talk “Intolerance in religion”, Pro Life Through Pro Choice, preparation for the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire’s debate against Bradford University’s Islamic Society and a social and it really pulled in the crowds.

When we arrived in The Terrace for our social not only did we fill an entire row of benches outside on the terrace itself but we had to move a few benches onto the end of the row to fit everyone on!

It really has been a fantastic start to the year for the society and I would like to congratuate everyone involved on really getting stuck in and making it work. People are already focused on maintaining this strength as well, it has really got me excited about what the society at the moment.

Another acamedic year has arrived and once again the A-Soc machine is rolling. We delivered out intro meeting to a packed out room last night at which Norm gave an excellent talk resulting in another load of sign-ups for the society.

Afterwards we headed down to OK Karaoke, taking around 30 people with us and despite the fact that nobody else turned up we still managed to make the place look crowded all by ourselves. They were so impressed that we’re now in talks for regular visits 😀 . Not to mention that they kept the bar open all night for us having been planning to close at 11.

Everyone seemed to have an amazing night and by the looks of things we will have lots of new people coming back. I had to leave at 1am due to having to be up for work that morning and most people were still in there! May the good times roll.

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 😀 .

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.

Tuesday night saw the A-Soc members’ dinner party to welcome in the new acamedic year and say thanks to our existing members for sticking with us before the intake of fresh faces arrives.

No less than eighteen people turned up to sample the “delights” – a modest four courses by comparission to our last dinner party but never the less when you scale that up to that many people that is rather a lot of food to cook. Luckily Liz and Michelle very kindly contributed dishes, as did Tesco.

The real hero of the night was Fonze however who battled his way through the various dishes and a mountain of washing up alongside myself for the entire night.

I haven’t really had a debrief with most people as I didn’t get chance to get that much chatting done on Tuesday night though most people seemed to enjoy the food – I got no less than three adjectives in Paul’s thank you text message. I’m still fairly convinced the rice was awful and the soup was stone cold but for now everyone is at least pretending the food was edible.

And, as with last time, nobody died (that I know of), so perhaps we can chalk this one down as another success.

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 buried as the new societies officer has never heard of it.

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.

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 fantastically to say so many people weren’t there.

Roll on freshers’ week!