Monday, April 22, 2013

NELGBT Conference

As the end of the semester usually is, this past week has been busy. So sorry for the oddly-staggered timing of my posts.

Last weekend (4/12-/14), a group of Saint Mike's students got to go to the annual NELGBT conference, which was hosted at RIT this year.

The trip was organized by Common Ground, the LGBTQIA group on campus, and twelve of us rode in two vans on Friday night, returning that Sunday. Funny enough, google maps actually brought our caravan through my hometown of Rome, NY, so we stopped and had dinner with my family on the way down. My parents said it was a nice (and unexpected :p) visit.

We got to the hotel late on Friday night, so the conference didn't really begin for us until Saturday. There were three workshop sessions throughout the day, and about 8-10 different workshops for each time period. There were some very compelling choices, and I ended up attending a documentary called Intersexion about people who are intersex, a trans*-ally workshop, and a seminar about the appropriation and use of marginalizing language by people who are marginalized. Some of the workshops were more discussion-based and others were more informational, and most of them had about 40 people in attendance.

The conference also had social aspects for the students, like informal lunchtime caucuses and a Saturday-night dance. In total, there were just under 600 people in attendance, which is a big conference from my perspective (especially since I go to a school of 2000). My favorite part of the weekend was definitely attending the workshops, since it was intellectually stimulating to engage with academics and older members of the LGBTQIA community about current issues in the community.

And speaking of the LGBTQIA community and its allies, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis will be on campus THIS THURSDAY as SMC's annual spring concert! Seeing as the concert has long since sold out, I'd say I'm not the only one looking forward to it ;)




Thanks for reading!

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