In November, University of Alberta engineering student Ian Bushfield successfully lobbied to get the chancellor’s convocation speech reworded to have less religious connotation. Now, a month away from receiving his engineering degree, he is refusing to sign the obligation for engineers because it contains the word God.
 
“I can’t find it in good faith,” Bushfield said. “I am disagreeing with part of it, and it takes away from the rest.”
 
Bushfield opposes the last line of the obligation, which reads: “Upon Honor and Cold Iron, God helping me, by these things I purpose to abide.”
Bushfield requested the word God be crossed off the obligation before he signed, but this request was denied.
 
In an open letter to The Corporation of Seven Wardens Inc., the Faculty of Engineering and the Professionals in Engineering and Geoscience in Alberta, he opposes the out-dated and discriminatory language in the obligation.
 
Bushfield said he disagrees with “the explicit assumption that all engineers be obligated to hold a belief in the existence of a higher power.”
 
By not signing the obligation, Bushfield will be precluded from the obligation ceremonies and will not receive the esteemed iron ring that is given to all engineers in Canada at the time of graduation. It will not affect his ability to practice as an engineer.
 
The University of Alberta Engineering Society declined to comment on the issue.
 
Bushfield is former head of the university’s atheists and agnostics society. He said atheist beliefs are being stifled on the U of A campus and he faces discrimination against his beliefs.
“We made bus ads like the ones in Toronto that say ‘There is probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life.’ They were all ripped down a week after we put them up,” Bushfield said.
 
However, Bushfield’s activism did lead to the rewording of the university’s convocation. Where it once read that students should use their education for the “glory of God,” it now reads “for the glory of your God.”
 
“I think that we reached an acceptable compromise,” Bushfield said. “We are going in the direction that we want to go, but I don’t know if we have completed the full distance.”
Matthew Glombick, U of A Pentecostal chaplain, said the rewording of the charge makes it more specific and meaningful.
 
“The term ‘glory of God’ can be somewhat vague and ambiguous for people with a limited religious background,” he said of the old convocation speech.
 
As the university’s chaplain, he said university events are already a largely secular affair. “Many of the students involved do not seem to have a strong, specific religious orientation, and the existing religious orientations among students are varied,” Glombick said.
 
Glombick said he supports Bushfield’s decision not to sign the obligation and is in favor of altering the language in certain ceremonies to include a diverse range of beliefs.
 
“It only seems fair that charges and obligations like the one signed by engineers reflect the values of the majority of those signing them,” he said.