Southeast Missouri State University’s Secular Student Alliance met in the Mississippi Room at the University Center on Jan. 24 for its first meeting of the semester.

The SSA is a club at Southeast that sets out to empower secular students to express their identity, build welcoming communities, promote secular values and set a course for lifelong activism.

The SSA also strives to work toward a future where secular students can lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, thrive as valued members of society and provide visionary leadership committed to humanistic ideals and critical inquiry.

While most would label secular as atheist, the SSA holds to the idea that secular means a person who forms their identity independent of any assumptions about the supernatural, willing to rethink their beliefs in light of empirical evidence and form their values based on concern for the present and future world.

To further distance themselves from the stigma and unpopular view of secularism in the U.S., the SSA plans to focus more on all religions this semester to better understand the opposing viewpoints and be more diverse in their meetings and discussions.

“This club is for anyone who wants to explore ideas from a non-theistic perspective,” Martha Taylor, the social and recruitment executive of SSA, said.

The major goal of SSA for the spring semester, above all else, is to create a judgment-free zone for students of all faiths to discuss the idea and role of secularism and faith in the community and abroad.

While the majority of the club identifies as some form of atheist based on the Dawkins Scale, a way to categorize one's beliefs regarding probability of the existence of a deity developed by Richard Dawkins, not all members are atheist or agnostic.

Joe Meier, a missionary at FOCUS, Fellowship of Catholic University Students at Southeast, and casual observer at SSA meetings said he found the first meeting to be inclusive and informative.

“I found it interesting and good discussion … I think there’s a lot of polarization within our culture, and there’s a lack of seeking to understand and it can be easy to judge a particular group … but I think it’s important to immerse yourself in trying to at least understand where they’re coming from,” Meier said.

Despite different viewpoints coming together in the club, in the end, it helps all involved get a better sense where each side is coming from.“You don’t have to agree on everything of course, but it’s good for me to understand where they’re coming from and to understand their story than just have this image of them in my mind that doesn’t match up with reality,” Meier said.

For spring 2017, SSA plans to continue being as involved as it was during the fall 2016 semester.

SSA members plan to have speakers at their meetings in the future, volunteering/fundraising events, tabling events in the UC and to attend conferences associated with secularism.

SSA makes it a priority for its members to have an active role in planning, discussions or ideas to make the organization more open to students.

For more information on SSA, students can attend its weekly meeting at 6 p.m. every Tuesday in the Mississippi Room at the UC.