The Cal Poly Veritas Forum returned to campus last week with large audience numbers at each of the week’s five events. The forum, which has been presented annually at Cal Poly since 2001, is sponsored by Campus Crusade (SLO Crusade), Associated Students Inc. and the national Veritas Forum, which sponsors similar events at college campuses across the country.
The event was organized by the Veritas Forum club, which became a charted club through ASI last year. According to the club’s Web site, the event is designed to promote exploration and discussion of “life’s hardest questions” and “the idea that Jesus Christ has something relevant to offer our modern university in its search for knowledge, truth and significance.”
The Veritas Forum included a series of activities from Jan.11 to Jan.15 such as student art displays, a speech by Veritas founder Kelly Monroe Kullberg and a discussion on the origins of life.
The forum used current events as the backdrop for some of its activities, including a video on human trafficking shown Thursday and a talk about why tragedies occur on Friday.
Controversy stemmed from the “Origins of Life” discussion, which was held Wednesday night in Chumash Auditorium, with approximately 800 audience members in attendance. There was some confusion with the fliers presented around campus promoting the event.
Although event organizers claimed the event was promoted as a fair discussion, some audience members said the discussion wasn’t evenhanded.
While the fliers advertiaed that the three event speakers would include an atheist evolutionist in addition to a creationist and an assisted evolutionist, event speaker Dr. Matthew Rainbow informed the audience that he was actually a “theist.”
“The atheist speaker wasn’t really atheist; I felt like I was being lied to, definitely misled,” said audience member Misha Davies, a Cal Poly graduate and former Cal Poly Brights president.
The Veritas club agreed that the term ‘‘atheist’’ was misleading. “When (Rainbow) was hired, we thought he was an atheist, but he was actually a theist,” said Chelsea Morrell, biomedical engineering senior and Veritas Forum club vice president.
She also responded to critics who complained the time allotted for Q&A was cut to 15 minutes due to a longer speaking section.
“I wish students had more time to ask questions to create more dialogue,” she said, acknowledging that a speaker requested more time to speak.
The event’s advertising strategies also drew controversy. Fliers posted on campus to promote the event depicted a microscope with the word ‘truth’ next to it, which some audience members found misleading, since many of the week’s events were largely faith-based.
“The microscope with the word ‘‘truth’’ next to it was misleading,” Davies said of the marketing strategy. “There was no telling that it was put on by Campus Crusade. If they wanted to promote truth, why aren’t they fully disclosing all the info?”
Morrell agreed that a microscope was misleading.
“Last year there were three symbols that represented us: a microscope, a painting and an open book. This year, we chose to do just the microscope, but then we realized that we’re not just scientific, so we brought back all three symbols (for next year).” Morrell said. “I feel (the microscope) didn’t encompass what Veritas is; it doesn’t just focus on science.”
Still, Veritas Forum members say that all of the week’s events were true to their intentions of starting a dialogue.
“It wasn’t a debate, no winner or loser. The audience is supposed to take the (information they hear) to think and talk about later,” Morrell said.