For the first time in at least 30 years, LGBTQA students from across the Ivy League will come together for a conference to discuss the issues affecting their community, according to Gender Sexuality XYZ co-chair Adam Holt '09. Dartmouth is not submitting a proposal to vie to be the host for the conference, Holt said.
The conference will include speakers, workshops and a career fair, among other activities, Holt said.
"I think that the sentiment was that [the conference] should be something down to earth, but at the same time academic," former GSX co-chair Christian Brandt '12 said.
A preliminary planning meeting was held at Columbia University earlier in April. The conference, which will likely occur in the fall or winter, will allow participants to raise awareness about LGBTQA issues and exchanges ideas, Holt said.
Students at the April meeting, which Brandt and Holt both attended, discussed the types of LGBTQA organizations that exist at each school and what types of events to host.
The students also discussed the incorporation of LGBTQA studies into their schools' academic curriculums.
"Part of it is really making a place for queer studies in academia," Holt said. "The Ivy League is kind of behind state schools in that."
Holt cited the University of California at Berkeley, which has an independent department for queer studies, as an example of an institution that has incporporated LGBTQA studies from an academic standpoint. Cornell University has a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies program, which offers a minor within its feminist, gender and sexuality studies group.
At Dartmouth, students can pursue a queer studies concentration as part of a women's and gender studies degree, but women's and gender studies is currently a program, not a department.
Brandt said he hopes attending the conference will encourage LGBTQA students to become more involved with these issues.
Most other Ivy League schools have multiple organizations for LGBTQA students, while Dartmouth has one, Brandt said. These schools, though, are larger than Dartmouth, which may explain the discrepancy, Brandt said. The conference may give students ideas about how to create more LGBTQA groups, Brandt said.
"I think GSX satisfies two purposes -- the political purpose and the social purpose," Brandt said. "I kind of want to separate those."
Separating these two purposes could motivate more students to become involved, Brandt said.
"A lot of reasons why queer people don't come [to LGBTQA gatherings] is because they don't want to be involved politically," he said.
Brandt also raised the issue of social space, as the LGBTQA community does not have an affinity house and he said the LGBTQA resource room is too small a space "for more than 10 people." Holt said the gender neutral floor in the McLane Residence Hall is insufficient to meet students' needs.
Although Dartmouth is not submitting an application to host the first conference, Holt said he hopes Dartmouth will host a conference in the future. He cited recent budget cuts and the College's location as reasons why Dartmouth would be "a tough sell."
"When you have a queer conference on your campus, you just have more visibility," Holt said.
Brandt said holding a conference at Dartmouth would "change the social scene" because the large number of LGBTQA students on campus would increase the level of community awareness about LGBTQA issues.
