FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CHAPEL HILL, NC (April 5, 2000)—On Tuesday, April 18, 2000, the Self Knowledge Symposium (SKS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) will hold its first annual poetry jam entitled "Rhymes, Rants, and Reflections." The event will occur from 8 to 10 p.m. at Caffe Trio, 201 E. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill. The Internet start-up Zoomculture.com will be present to film the poetry jam for later Internet broadcast.

High energy and intense, the poetry jam is free and open to the public. The sign-up to read original work begins at 8 p.m., with reading times assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. All are welcome to read, but only original verse written by students attending UNC-CH, Duke University, and North Carolina State is eligible for consideration in the contest. Participants must be present at the end of the event in order to be awarded prizes.

Additionally, participants are encouraged to bring copies of their work for possible publication both on the Self Knowledge Symposium website (www.selfknowledge.org) and also in The Symposium, SKS's own international, student-run spiritual journal, recently featured in the Durham Herald-Sun and the national magazine Spirituality and Health. Zoomculture.com, recently returned from the Sundance Film Festival, has asked the SKS to provide content for the "spirituality channel" on its streaming media website, and so will film this event for future broadcast.

"While students complain they're not being heard, and administrators are waiting for students to have something to say, the students in the SKS are taking action with this poetry slam," says Brad Rolen, president of the UNC-CH SKS. "Somewhere between the campus 'intellectual climate' efforts and a late-night, dorm-room B.S. session, this event is a grassroots effort by students to say what's really on their minds." Rolen points to books such as Tom Beaudoin's Virtual Faith, which notes that Gen-Xers are suspicious of traditional religious institutions, but still hunger for religious meaning. "Young people seek spiritual meaning in their own experience—they want to find out for themselves, not just believe what they are told. While this poetry slam is in no way anti-religion, it is a free forum for students to explore and express their own experiences with life's toughest question, 'Why?' "

The Self Knowledge Symposium would like to thank Caffe Trio, Office Supplies and More, and Barnes & Noble for their support.

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The Self Knowledge Symposium Foundation (SKSF) is a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging people to consciously develop their own personal, moral and spiritual values and to live according to them. The SKSF has been praised as "the hottest thing happening in higher education today" by Dr. William Willimon, Dean of Duke University Chapel, ranked by Newsweek as one of the top ten preachers in the English-speaking world, and author of The Search for Meaning. At the forefront of the national interest in spirituality, the SKSF creates experiential learning programs and social contexts within which people can explore the deeper questions in life, developing intellectual understanding and personal character in a quest for the life worth living. The SKSF advises the SKS campus groups, sponsors a non-student discussion group, and co-sponsors meetings, lectures, retreats and The Symposium spiritual journal. For more information, visit www.selfknowledge.org.