A few weeks ago, UNCW hosted the annual Involvement Carnival, which attracts clubs, banks, churches, surf shops, hair salons and many more businesses to advertise their opportunities and products to students. Phillip Drum and members of his newly founded organization, UNCW Skeptics, have been handing out flyers promoting their new club since the first week of the semester and a couple flyers happened to drop by the Her Campus table during the Carnival. Catching our attention, we interviewed founder Phillip Drum to find out more about the club.
HC: Can you briefly describe what the UNCW Skeptics organization is?
PD: The UNCW Skeptics is an organization whose chief goal is to create a secular community at UNCW for the students to talk about critical issues in the modern world. The target audience is students who identify as atheist, agnostic, skeptical, or questioning. Questioning refers to questioning the values individuals were given by their community in their youth, when they had no choice or ability to critically question information provided to them. I think that this is pretty important since approximately 20% of the American population identifies with this group based on their beliefs, and an even larger percentage of millennials identify in this way. Our group is provisional, so there aren’t too many members yet, but we are raising awareness around campus. The goals right now are sort of amorphous, but eventually we will hold one lecture per semester, have one large charity event per year, and participate in events with other groups.
Seeing the statistic provided by Drum, I conducted further research concerning how millennials identify their beliefs from the Pew Research Center. “Overall, 35% of adult millennials (Americans born between 1981 and 1996) are religiously unaffiliated. Far more millennials say they have no religious affiliation compared with those who identify as evangelical Protestants (21%), Catholics (16%) or mainline Protestants (11%)” (Michael Lipka, 2015). I thought it was interesting that the majority of the millennials identified as having no religious affiliation, yet there was not a club specifically dedicated to accommodate this population of students on UNCW’s campus.
This prompted me to ask Drum why he decided to start this organization, considering it would allow those students a place they could connect with those who had beliefs similar to their own.
PD: I started the group from nothing, created all of the flyers, and started trying to find members during the first weeks of this semester. This group was supposed to be founded last year and I was going to just be a member, but it didn’t happen. I decided to step up because I have created a group similar to this during my undergrad at UNCG. I had two officers that volunteered to help with the creation of this group, but they both resigned after they discovered they already had too much in the way of responsibilities… I chose to start this group for the same reasons as I wanted to start the last one. I wanted to find people who think like I do and have good conversations with them. People can go to a church or a religious club to meet people like them in that respect, but there is no banner for people to gather around. I decided to create that banner.
HC: Some could assume the word “skeptic” has a negative connotation. What are a few common misconceptions about being a skeptic, agnostic or atheist that UNCW Skeptics feels like are important to address first and foremost?
PD: Some common misconceptions about non-believers are that we are intolerant, that we deify science, that we are a fringe group of the population, that we lack morality, or even that we see ourselves as gods. Even though the non-religious are a large part of the population, many non-religious people keep their views to themselves.
HC: What are some common misconceptions about the organization? What are common questions people looking for more information about the organization ask before being involved?
PD: Common misconceptions about the group so far have revolved around people thinking we are a conspiracy theory group about UFOs and 9/11. That is some pretty interesting imagery for the word skeptic, but those myths are pretty easy to dispel. Every email we have received has just been asking about meeting times, and asking us about the group. People are curious to know more.
HC: How do the UNCW Skeptics typically advertise?
PD: We have a Facebook group, we have a twitter handle (@UNCWSkeptics), and we have been placing signs all over campus for people to contact us. We will advertise more when we have events planned and more members.
UNCW Skeptics Flyer courtesy of Phillip Drum.
The UNCW Skeptics is an organization with the intention of reaching those students who want to build a community with others who share their beliefs and create an atmosphere in which they can comfortably discuss real-life issues without religious pressures. If you are interested in finding out more, you can Tweet, Facebook, or email Phillip Drum.