IU to host Midwest BLGT conference

 Packing up after three days at the University of Illinois for last year’s Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference, IU students Solomon Hursey and Julia Napolitano used their bus ride home as a chance to start planning IU’s turn to play host to the event.

“We were so busy we didn’t really sleep. We had to cram too much into those three days,” Hursey, now a junior, said.

Having the conference at IU has been in the works since before co-chairs Hursey and Napolitano, a sophomore, started volunteering at the Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Student Support Services Office.

In 2007, Bloomington won the bid to host the 2009 conference. The 17th annual event will take place Feb. 13 through Feb. 15. This is the first time it will be held at IU. Hursey said that the conference is the biggest and oldest of its kind in the country.

Conference publicity chairwoman Bethany Lister said the conference has good timing because Bloomington has recently been ranked the country’s No. 1 gay-friendly, small-town vacation destination by The Advocate’s Web site. The Advocate is a U.S.-based national gay and lesbian news magazine.

The Midwest doesn’t have the attention the East and West Coasts have in terms of GLBT issues, Lister said. She added that the conference is great for younger students who are afraid to come out.

On Jan. 30, online registration for the conference hit more than 1,000 participants. Napolitano said people are attending from all over the country and even overseas. She added that students from other universities are staying with IU students, and that with the approval of Residential Programs and Services, the conference is finding hosts for participants through a Facebook group.

Conference attendees can attend five sessions. Each session will have about 20 workshops to pick from and will take place in various campus buildings.
Hursey said the workshops were open to proposals and more than 100 were received. Professors, professionals and students submitted proposals. Most workshops are roundtable discussions covering a range of topics including politics, finance and relationships.

Several workshops focus on history for social movements to go with the conference’s theme of “Living Out Loud: Examining the Past to Enhance Our Future.”

“We can tweak past social movements and strategies to work for our current social, political and cultural climate,” Hursey said.

Napolitano and Hursey said they hoped to reach out to different departments and bridge groups that may not always intersect with the GLBT community such as athletics, religious groups and the greek community.

“There is always going to be discrimination in the world, and the goal is to raise awareness,” Napolitano said. “The point is to be respectful.”

Napolitano added that many GLBT allies attend the workshops and several of the workshops also focus on ally training.

She said she hopes that when people leave the conference they will have learned different strategies to practice equality in their lives, had a worthwhile experience and learned what it means to identify or not identify with different groups.

“We’re hoping that people from schools that aren’t so with it in terms of GLBT acceptance learn tools and strategies,” Hursey said.

The conference also features “The L Word” writer, director and producer Rose Troche; openly gay ESPN sports columnist LZ Granderson and Indiana State University professor Kand McQueen as keynote speakers and several
GLBT-related performances.

The conference is working with the community to include several GLBT events, art displays and theater performances.

“It’s the most exciting thing I’ve been involved in,” Napolitano said. “I can’t imagine anything topping this.”