Nontheistic Students on Campus: Understanding and Accommodating Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists, and Others

 This article, co-authored by Challenge the Gap advisors Elizabeth Liddell (Secular Student Alliance) and Christopher Stedman (Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard) appeared in the September 2011 edition of the Journal of College and Character.

Abstract

The number of students who do not believe in a higher power is rising, but these students often find themselves marginalized and struggle to gain acceptance on campus. Using data from the Secular Student Alliance, this article explores the interests of nonreligious nontheistic students, identifies issues these students face on campus, and offers strategies for accommodating nonreligious nontheists as part of a diverse student body.

In 2007, University of Northern Iowa student Cody Hashman identified a problem on his campus and decided to do something about it. “Cody noticed that when religious students come to college, they have all these groups to choose from,” said Cory Derringer, current president of the UNI Freethinkers and Inquirers (UNIFI). “That option really wasn’t there for nonreligious students, so he wanted to fix that” (C. Derringer, personal communication, June 8, 2011).

The group started small—averaging 5 to 10 people at their weekly meetings for a few years—but in the last two years participation has surged, and they now see 30 to 60 attendees at their weekly Sunday brunch and hundreds at their larger events, with over 1,400 people attending their Darwin Week event series (Wilkins, 2011).

In this sense, UNIFI is not particularly unique. While one of the better-attended groups, UNIFI is just one of many nonreligious college student groups to experience significant growth in the last five years (Niose, 2011). This phenomenon—increasing participation in nonreligious student groups on American college campuses—demonstrates that nonreligious nontheistic students are

part of a diverse college campus. This article intends to help college administrations successfully navigate this new territory.

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