Students Travel to NYC for IvyQ Conference

By Winnie Yoe | 2/22/11 2:08pm

Sha­rang Biswas ’12 had the op­por­tu­nity to per­form in his first drag show and meet pro­fes­sional drag queens this past Fri­day dur­ing a drag work­shop at the 2011 IvyQ Con­fer­ence. The ex­pe­ri­ence was “very in­ter­est­ing,” he said.

Biswas was one of 26 Dart­mouth stu­dents to at­tend the sec­ond an­nual Ivy League con­fer­ence for LGBTQ stu­dents and their al­lies, hosted by Co­lum­bia Uni­veristy, last week­end. The IvyQ con­fer­ence aims at “net­work­ing to cre­ate a strong and so­cial pan-Ivy LGBTQA com­mu­nity,” ac­cord­ing to the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s web­site.

This year’s con­fer­ence was at­tended by about 400 stu­dents and lasted from Feb­ru­ary 17-20. A Co­lum­bia stu­dent hosted each par­tic­i­pant.

Dur­ing the three days of the con­fer­ence, stu­dents at­tended seven cat­e­gories of events, in­clud­ing pro­grams about health, queer stud­ies, iden­tity, ac­tivism and spon­sors.

“There is some­thing for every­one,” Biswas said.

Biswas said his fa­vorite work­shop was one on queer por­trayal in art, hosted by an art his­tory pro­fes­sor and two New York mu­seum ex­hi­bi­tion cre­ators.

The con­fer­ence’s keynote speaker was Amanda Simp­son, the Se­nior Tech­ni­cal Ad­vi­sor to the Under Sec­re­tary of Com­merce who tran­si­tioned her gen­der dur­ing 2000. Dart­mouth alumna Joanne Her­man ’75, a trans­sex­ual, also spoke about the lack of pro­tec­tion for trans­sex­u­als in most states.

Though more Dart­mouth stu­dents at­tended the IvyQ con­fer­ence this year, “Dart­mouth doesn't have a very big out queer pop­u­la­tion,” Biswas said, adding that Brown Uni­ver­sity sent 80 stu­dents to par­tic­i­pate.

The con­fer­ence was a great op­por­tu­nity “to net­work with other smart, dri­ven gay peo­ple,” he said.

Biswas quoted a re­mark one of his friends made, “Wow, this is what straight peo­ple feel all the time,” about his ex­pe­ri­ence on the trip.