U of A convocation urged to shed religious references

The University of Alberta is being urged to remove all references to God from its convocation ceremonies.

The university's chancellor now tells students receiving degrees to use their education "for the glory of God," but the Atheist and Agnostic Society is lobbying the administration to change that part of the ceremony.

"We have a large number of professors and faculty who are on our side," said society presidentIan Bushfield. "We have a fairly strong student population. We have about 150 signatures already on a petition and we're growing that slowly and we have a fairly decent representation across the board, I think."

Other Canadian universities have already removed all religious references from their convocation ceremonies, Bushfield said.

"Schools like the University of Calgary and the University of Toronto have already blazoned forward and removed these kinds of religious references from their own convocation, so we're not trying to stir new ground here," he said. "We're really just following what other schools are already doing and the trends that are already present in society today."

A purely secular ceremony would show a tolerance to all graduates, regardless of religious belief, Bushfield said.

He hopes the ceremony will be changed before he graduates in spring 2009.