Highlights Report 2005-2006

Name of Organization: Student Sociology Association (SSA)
Total Number of Active Members: 10
Role of Advisor: Super Luminary
Semester/Year: Fall 2005, Spring 2006
Person Submitting Report: Advisor, Adjunct Professor, William C. Ervin
Meeting Schedule Every Tuesday, 4:30 p.m., one hour
Average number at meeting: 7

Highlights of the Semester

As a fund raiser, we sold approximately 25 t-shirts with a Sociology motto.

Visit to the Children's Bureau for a Saturday where we taught crafts, juggling and games to children.

A "professions night" panel was held and included of a prosecutor, a social worker, a lawyer, a business finance officer, an FBI Special Agent in Charge of Recruiting, an Indianapolis Police Officer and a Salvation Army worker.

We implemented "Stamps for Soldiers," a Salvation Army project to collect cancelled stamps from various sources on campus. The stamps are sold to dealers and the proceeds used to finance the shipment of packages of essentials to servicemen and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We established the first University Chapter in the United States of the John Weidner Foundation for Altruism. We also established an endowed scholarship to reward a student for acts of altruism. John Weidner was a Seventh Day Adventist who operated the Amsterdam to Paris escape route in WWII for people fleeing the Nazis and for British and American airmen who had been shot down in occupied territory. He helped more than 1000 escape to Switzerland and Spain and was honored by many governments. He was also a guest speaker at the opening of the Holocaust Museum in 1993. Upcoming Semester The SSA plans to collect examples of altruism from Butler Students and from public sources. In the spring the SSA will award a scholarship to a student, financed by a grant from the Downtown Rotary Club and will also make an altruism award to a non-student. Plans also include exploring graduate study programs in social work at various universities, continuing the Stamps for Soldiers Program, and inviting children from the Salvation Army Domestic Abuse Center to Butler functions.