It’s common to spot students selling cookies and baked goods around campus to raise funds for their groups.

A student organization, however, had an unconventional fundraiser last week: members of Wayne State’s Secular Student Alliance were “auctioning” their “souls” on Gullen Mall Sept. 29.

For money, one could take an SSA student to a house of worship and have him perform any sort religious services within reason for a day.

“Would you like to take one of us atheists to church?” Hassan Khalifeh, the group’s president, would ask passersby.

But secular students’ souls were not very valuable that day; the highest bid they had gotten by midday was $15.

The soul sale fundraiser was one of a series of events that the alliance organized on campus last week.

The SSA is a national organization. Khalifeh founded the WSU chapter after learning about the alliance while discussing the separation of state and church in a political science class.

The goals of the group, as described by its members, are to promote secular society and expose people to ideas outside their faiths.

“A secular society is the safest for everybody,” said Matt Aharonov, the SSA’s director of public relations. He said when the state has nothing to do with religion no one can tell anyone who to worship, and people would be able to practice their faith or lack of faith freely.

“We’re not trying to rob people of their faith,” Khalifeh said. “If it makes you happy, you have the right to practice it. We just want people to explore other ideas, flip the coin and see the other side.”

Aharonov said that the group is not exclusively for atheists and many members are religious students who favor a secular society.

All the members interviewed were atheists. The alliance’s slogans and events seem to have little – if any – appeal to theists. Members’ offering to perform religious services for money was officially called “Atheist Soul Auction.”

Group members have much regard for Richard Dawkins, the pope of atheism, as they were selling audio CDs of his lectures and wearing “Scarlet A” pins. The pins are a part of Dawkins’ Out Campaign, which encourages “in the closet atheists” to reveal their atheism. The premise of the campaign is that “atheists are far more numerous than most people realize,” according to their website.

According to Aharonov, the group has about 100 members, about 10 of whom are actually active. The organization’s group on Facebook has 42 members.

On Sept. 29, the organization was trading religious texts for fiction books in an event called “Fiction for Fiction.”

“Religious texts are works of fiction,” Khalifeh said. “And we’re trading them off.”

Khalifeh is a business major and blogger whose essays have been published in The South End.

“Hassan is on top of everything we do,” Aharonov said.

Khalifeh said the SSA gets mixed responses from students during events. However, the group has been subjected to abuse, as its flyers have been torn down and its members have received emails harassing them, according to Khalifeh.

“Some people are very intolerant to others’ ideas,” he said. “That’s why confidentiality is very important in our group. We don’t reveal members’ names because it might hurt their lives and relationships with family and friends. You don’t have to sacrifice yourself for the cause.”

During the soul auction, most students walked by the SSA’s table with indifference, often giving them questioning looks. Curiosity was the prevailing attitude among those who stopped.

A student who walked faster when confronted with the group, as if she were running away from them, refused to comment about her thoughts of the alliance. “It’s strange,” she said, as she kept walking.

Danielle Levey, biochemistry major, was encouraging of the organization because “it gives a singled out group a chance to unite.”

Dwight Wise, a business major, labeled the group “controversial.” But he said he doesn’t mind the alliance’s actions as long as they’re not offensive. He called their “Fiction for Fiction” event “borderline offensive.”

Tori Reeder, 18, said she joined the group “to promote science and reason and take away misconceptions about atheism.”

Despite her apparent enthusiasm during the “soul auction,” Reeder said she doesn’t like being in the public eye.

Both Khalifeh and Reeder, who are respectively Arab and African-American, belong to ethnic communities that value faith.

Reeder has not had much trouble with her family and community because she’s still an in-the-closet atheist. “My parents would disown me if they knew I’m an atheist,” she said.

Khalifeh, however, is open about his lack of religious beliefs with his family.

“My mom thinks I’m the devil,” he said jokingly. But then, he added that his family does not mind his atheism despite disagreeing with him.