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The Dartmouth
March 28, 2024 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

IvyQ wraps up plans before conference

A photo display marks LGBTQ history month in Baker-Berry Library.
A photo display marks LGBTQ history month in Baker-Berry Library.

In the month before IvyQ, student organizers have turned their attention to fundraising, housing and registration. While the planning committee, headed by Kelsey Weimer ’16 and Akash Kar ’16, has secured contracts for almost all visiting speakers and finalized plans for social events and venues, organizers have struggled to recruit enough hosts for the roughly 300 conference attendees.

About 120 students have signed up so far to host attendees from other schools, and organizers hope to double that number by November, housing chair Yejadai Dunn ’16 said.

The Ivy-wide conference for LGBTQ students, held since spring 2010, will bring keynote speakers, workshops, social events and entertainment to Dartmouth on Nov. 6 through Nov. 9. This year is Dartmouth’s first year hosting IvyQ.

After Dartmouth lost last spring’s bid to Princeton University, Weimer and Kar reapplied to host the conference last December and was chosen to host this fall. They formulated a planning committee and started the planning process at the start of spring term.

“This conference is a monster,” Weimer said. “It’s such a big thing to plan, a completely student-run initiative.”

The Center of Gender and Student Engagement is providing financial and organizational support for this year’s conference, financial chair Tyler Stoff ’15 said.

Organizers sought to enlist a combination of familiar and new speakers, consulting with the leaders of Princeton’s conference about the most popular speakers from last year, Weimer said. Rachel Hein ’15, Melina Bartels ’15 and Gustavo Mercado Muniz ’16 have coordinated speaker outreach.

“One of the main goals of IvyQ is to empower students to make changes not only in their respective LGBT communities, but also within greater LGBT communities,” Weimer said. “We think the workshop speakers will really empower attendees to catalyze change.”

The committee decided to wait for the fall to conduct registration and coordinate housing “to be inclusive and engage the freshman community,” Weimer said.

In addition to holding planning meetings this fall, organizers have held open meetings to educate other students about the conference.

IvyQ’s focus has evolved from pre-professional to educational over the years, making raising money more difficult, Stoff said. Although past hosts have been able to rely on corporate sponsors, as IvyQ was the only conference for LGBTQ students, he said, more conferences exist today and many have a more pre-professional focus.

“We’re trying to reemphasize the focus on education, community and activism,” Weimer said.

Google, among other corporate sponsors, donated to this year’s conference, but organizers plan to spend the next month recruiting more corporate support, Stoff said.

Despite the continuing fundraising efforts, Stoff emphasized that the conference is not in a budget deficit.

“If we wanted to put on the conference tomorrow, we could do it, but we want to make it better,” he said. “Money is the way to do that, in many ways.”

The conference costs about $20,000, with most funding coming from the College, including the Provost’s office, the President’s office and the Dean of the College office, Stoff said.

“I was concerned that we weren’t going to get a lot of administrative support, but it was just the opposite,” Stoff said.

Academic departments at Dartmouth, such as the sociology department and the women’s and gender studies program, have contributed money as well.

Hanover’s location makes fundraising difficult, Stoff said. At the Princeton conference, many speakers took day trips from New York City by train, but this year, speakers require hotel rooms and higher travel costs.

Organizers decided to avoid holding any events in fraternities, as some participants may be nervous about Dartmouth’s Greek system, but residents of Greek houses may host attendees, safety co-chair Olivia Bauer ’17 said.

“All of the events are in spaces that we control and can make sure are safe,” Bauer said.

The safety team, co-chaired by Logan Henderson ’17, has focused on ensuring access to gender neutral bathrooms, first aid in the 24-hour safe space, transportation to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and counselors if material upsets attendees or conflict arises between students. The team has also made sure that all events are accessible to all students.

Mauricio Esquivel Rogel ’18, who attended the first planning meeting and has registered for the conference, said he believes planners could better explain and advertise the conference, especially its most prominent speakers, to the Dartmouth community.

“If a celebrity comes, everyone is interested,” he said. “Even though that’s not what the conference is about, I think it’s a good idea to start advertising from that point and go on.”

Though some potential attendees have expressed uneasiness about Dartmouth hosting the conference, Zachary Myslinski ’15, who has been involved with IvyQ since Dartmouth’s first bid attempt in 2012, said he believes next month’s conference will bring “new conversations, perspective and insight” to campus, prompting introspection among students.

“Over the last four years, campus as a whole has been looking inwards towards itself through a critical lens,” Myslinski said. “I think we’re becoming less complacent, more activist, more invested in making Dartmouth something better.”