Rob
Sherman Advocacy
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Rob
Sherman Advocacy
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"Fighting injustice, one victory at a time."
Here is yet another edition of our popular, regular feature, "Sherman Advocacy Succeeds Again." Sherman Advocacy continues to be the nation's leader for the civil rights of atheists and state/church separation.
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As reported in the September 18th edition of Liberal News & Commentary, Sherman Advocacy received a complaint from someone associated with the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), one of the nation's finest urban institutions of higher learning. The complaint expressed concern that the selection of a particular phrase for the e-mail contact address for UIC's high school fair was inappropriate because it had the effect of government advancement of religion.
The UIC high school fair is a trade show. Exhibitors at the fair are public high schools and also secular and religious private high schools. The attendees at the fair are seventh and eighth graders, along with their parents. The purpose of the fair is for the exhibitors to recruit the attendees to become new students.
The e-mail contact address for the fair on the UIC fair web page consisted of the phrase, "God Is All at UIC dot EDU" (godisall@uic.edu). The complainant asked what Sherman Advocacy could do about getting the contact e-mail address changed. I assured the complainant that Sherman Advocacy had the experience to get the problem resolved and knew effective techniques to utilize to get the job done. I told him that I would engage in a dialog with university officials to successfully persuade them to make a change, rather than engaging in an ineffective monolog, like American Atheists does, of either issuing empty press releases which warn that government officials should not do certain things (warnings which are never backed up), or of proclaiming demands in a protest demonstration which accomplishes nothing because the targets of the demonstration aren't around to see or hear the demonstration and because the leadership of American Atheists refuses to go to the effort of engaging in dialog with decision-makers who could make the changes that AA wants.
I contacted the office of UIC Chancellor Sylvia Manning and spoke to an assistant to the Chancellor. I articulated the issues, explaining that government employees must be neutral towards matters of faith when dealing with the public. This is especially true when government is dealing with children, because children are particularly vulnerable to intimidation by adults.
Here is the premise for the objection to the "God" e-mail address. A student may have come to realize, as most adults already have (or should have), that God is make-believe. That student may have planned on attending the UIC high school fair. However, if that student went to UIC's official government web site for the high school fair, the student might decide to not attend the fair out of fear that the fair was just a hook being used by a government employee to attract victims for proselytizing.
That was the key question created by the use of the "God" e-mail address. What is the purpose of the fair? Is the purpose to attract students to a forum about educational opportunities, or is the real purpose of the fair to use public resources and deception to attract potential converts to the religious views of the coordinator of the early outreach program?
The assistant to the Chancellor felt that the concern expressed by Sherman Advocacy, in behalf of the complainant, had sufficient merit to be referred for action. The matter was referred to Patricia Gill, the Associate Chancellor for Access and Equity, for a determination as to what action, if any, was merited.
Pat and I spoke about the matter, and she agreed that using a statement of religious advocacy as the e-mail contact address for a government program targeted at children was of questionable judgment. She said that a policy review might be in order, and that she would get back to me promptly, probably in about a week.
Pat kept all of her promises to me. She got back to me about a week later with an update, indicated that a change in e-mail addresses was in order, and kept me informed as the process continued for getting the address changed.
Yesterday, that process concluded. A new e-mail address now appears on the high school fair web page. "God Is All at UIC dot EDU" has been replaced with "Early Outreach Program Administrator ('eopadmin') at UIC dot EDU."
As an urban public university, UIC has always had a special mission of looking out for the interests of minorities and the oppressed. Today, through the caring and enlightened efforts of Pat Gill, UIC continues that fine tradition.
If you'd like to help Rob Sherman Advocacy continue to be able to resolve issues like these through effective dialog with the leaders of government and private industry, please help to provide the financial resources necessary to do the job by becoming a financial supporter of Rob Sherman Advocacy.
Rob Sherman P. O. Box
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A post office box is used
because
the street address uses a curb mail box,
which is not secure.
Telephone: (847) 870-0700
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E-mail: rob followed by the at symbol followed by robsherman dot com