The Society of Non-Theists has had a particularly bad time putting up flyers at Purdue. I’ve had events where 75% or higher of the flyers were torn down after 24 hours, and I had to constantly replace them. This is disappointing for many reasons, but mostly because it takes me a lot of time to create them all and put them up everywhere, not to mention the cost of getting them printed. This doesn’t have to be a huge expense, especially if you make black and white copies as they are cheaper to print, which you can learn here. But that’s not the point – they still cost money and people are ripping them down as if they are worthless. We only put them where they’re allowed to be, but that doesn’t stop students from tearing them down. Purdue used to allow you to tape flyers to the ground (no longer do, it was an eye sore), and even those went missing. I actually caught someone in the act and tried to stop them, but since he and his friends were very large males and weren’t being too kind to me, I decided my well being is more important than a flyer and backed off. And if the flyers aren’t being torn down, they’re being written on – stuff like “Jesus loves you” and “You’re going to hell.” Interesting dichotomy there, no?

Anyway, we have some new flyer drama developments. I was going to LILY to relax in the library, but instead I got all riled up. Why? Of our five flyers on the main for, two were torn down and replaced by a Fraternity’s flyer, and the other three were directly covered by that Frat’s flyers like so:

These poster boards had plenty of space for the flyers to go, and the only other group that had a flyer perfectly covering it was the Queer Student Union:

Coincidence? I think not.

My first instinct was “Grrrr Delta Pi Rho!!! You’re a minority frat! Shouldn’t your members know better than treats other minority groups’ flyers like that?!” But then I looked at the flyer set up again. None of them completely covered our flyers, which had been the case in the past. They all made sure to include “Atheist?!” or “God?!” or “Big Gay.” What do I think is really happening? Some jerkface probably thinks it’s funny to slur Delta Pi Rho by calling them gay atheists by rearranging the flyers that way.

And you know what? That probably makes me crankier than if Delta Pi Rho themselves had just been acting like jerks. The fact that “atheist” is used as an insult really illustrates how most of America (especially conservative parts like Purdue) view nonbelievers. It’s a dirty word and a slur. What’s worse than being an atheist or gay?

I usually could care less when rival frats play pranks on each other (which is probably all this is), but at least do it without making some of the largest minority groups in America the butt of the jokes.