Support Science Education in Ohio

On November 7, the citizens of the State of Ohio will be voting a bunch of things, just like all Americans. One of the things they'll be voting for are seats on the State Board of Education (see Ed's discussion here). In one of the races, an anti-science incumbent, Deborah Owens-Fink, is running against a pro-science challenger, Tom Sawyer. Owens-Fink has been far more successful at raising money than Sawyer. To donate money to Sawyer's campaign visit here.

More about the push for donations can be found below the fold.

Taken from EvolDir:

Dear Fellow Scientists,

In 2003, our community pulled together in response to an attack on the teaching of evolution in Ohio. We electronically circulated a petition that was signed by over 6,800 scientists across our country. Many of you also wrote passionate comments about how this 10th grade "critique of evolution" lesson plan was just flat out bad science. We were able to take those signatures and comments to the Ohio Board of Education and show the moderates on the board the strength of support for the teaching of evolution within the scientific community. Unfortunately, at the time there were not enough moderates on the Board to overturn the lesson plan & it narrowly passed.

The architect of that anti-science lesson plan, Deborah Owens-Fink, is up for re-election on Nov. 7th. About one month ago, we again electronically circulated a similar request for help to our scientific community, this time requesting a small donation to help us to replace Owens-Fink with a pro-science candidate (former congressman Tom Sawyer) for the Ohio Board of Education. We assumed that if ~50% of those 6,800 people would donate $5-10, we would be in a strong position to get our pro-science message out & counter what would likely be a well funded Owens-Fink campaign.

Unfortunately, our community has yet to pull through for us this time. We have only received 191 donations, & over half of these have been from non-scientists concerned with the state of science education in our country. Owens-Fink has raised three times as much money as we have, with her average donor giving over $1000. She has been sending out more mailings & buying more advertising than we have been able to afford.

We would like to ask you to reconsider helping us out. If you would simply go to www.votetomsawyer.com and donate $10 and then pass this message to a handfull of your colleagues (much the same as you did with our 2003 petition), we will be able to afford the mailings we need to get our word out in these crucial final 2 weeks of the campaign. We have the chance to depose the single most effective promoter of Intelligent Design in Ohio, and for a mere $10, you can help us to eliminate the need to have to circulate the NEXT petition to once again implore the moderates on the Ohio BOE to reject the next anti-science lesson plan that Owens-Fink will assuredly propose if she is re-elected!

Thank you for your help,

Steve Weeks

Randy Mitchell

Peter Niewiarowski

Francisco Moore

Todd Blackledge

Rich Londraville

PS please act soon - the Election will be November 7, and we need to be active well ahead of then.