The weekend of Feb. 8-10 will bring together an important contingent of the LGBT population.
Undergraduate and graduate students from throughout the Midwest will gather at Michigan State University (MSU) for the annual Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference (MBLGTACC), which is the largest LGBTA college conference in the nation. It is also the second largest LGBT conference overall in country, surpassed only by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Creating Change Conference.
"The conference serves to educate and unify the LGBT community while also providing a safe and supportive forum for discourse about issues that are important to the community," explained Erica Shekell, director of marketing and public relations for the conference.
"Each year the conference also has a specific theme. For the 2013 conference, our theme is Mosaic, putting the pieces together, which is essentially about exploring the many different identities within the LGBT community and how those different identities intersect with other identities and how they are stronger when we all come together to work on different issues that impact us both individually and as a community."
The conference includes four keynote speakers, who will speak to the issue of identity, a handful of entertainers, two films and 98 different workshops.
Keynote speakers include:
—Emi Koyama: multi-issue social justice activist and writer synthesizing feminist, Asian, survivor, dyke, queer, sex worker, intersex, genderqueer and crip politics in relation to how these labels impact her life;
—Ben Cohen: England Rugby World Cup champion and second in all-time scoring for his country. He is first among straight athletes to focus his philanthropic efforts for the benefit of LGBT people;
—Robyn Ochs: An advocate for the rights of people of all orientations and genders to live safely, openly and with full legal and social equality. Robyn's work focuses on increasing awareness and understanding of complex identities and mobilizing people to be powerful allies to one another within and across identities and social movements; and
—LZ Granderson: African-American, openly gay, Christian and a father as well as an award-winning columnist and TV pundit and popular online columnists for both CNN and ESPN. The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association also previously recognized him as Journalist of the Year.
"We really wanted people who could speak to a multitude of identities, and the identities that you don't necessarily think of as mainstream to the LGBT community," said Shekell.
Poet and spoken-word artist Staceyann Chin, singer Abigail Stauffer and singer/songwriter Justin Utley will provide entertainment for the weekend.
There will also be two films showing at the conference, the world premiere of Scary Normal, a coming-of-age comedy by Jennifer Bechtel; and Love Free or Die, a documentary about openly gay bishop Gene Robinson.
Workshops will compose the majority of the weekend's goings on and provide the backdrop for discussion amongst participants.
"We are confident that we have some really fantastic workshops," Shekell said. "We are really looking forward to seeing them."
The scheduled workshops cover a multitude of issues, including religion and the LGBT community, trans identity and issues, labels and labeling, African-American leadership within the LGBT community and several issues facing today's LGBT college students.
"The really fun and cool thing about this conference is the incredible amount of energy from people," Shekell said. "They are excited to be there. The college students, they're energetic, they're experiencing a new city. They are for the first time surrounded by 1,700 LGBTA people, which is an environment that you don't run into anywhere else.
"Just being at the conference is an incredibly powerful experience for a lot of people. Some people come from colleges that may be conservative, small, rural or maybe religiously based, and if the administration or anyone at the college knew that they were LGBT identified they could potentially be expelled from the university. So there are people who come from places that are not supportive in any way. Some places that won't even allow a gay-straight alliance to form, or won't recognize it. Some people come to this conference to find people like themselves or to find resources about how do you work in such an environment or situation. It's really important."
Shekell said that even students from a school like MSU, which has at least 14 different LGBT-specific clubs on campus, experience something unique just because of the sheer number of LGBT students on campus for the conference and the opportunity to feel oneself as the majority for a change.
The MBLGTACC is organized entirely by students, and is held at a different colleges or universities each year. Students from multiple MSU LGBTA groups came together to pitch their school and five students have served primarily as the organizers for the event.
"Our student government has actually paid for about 50 MSU students to be bussed to this conference and has completely paid the bussing, hotel and the registration fee, 100 percent, for many years," Shekell said. "So we have been participating in this conference and we decided we really wanted to host the conference."
Shekell said MSU departments and professors have been very supportive of the conference, providing resources, guidance and donations.
She expects that the conference will draw 2,000 people this year, mostly undergrad students, but also graduate students, community members, leaders of LGBT organizations from the Midwest as well as from national organizations, and other interested community members.
For more information about the conference, including workshop schedules, attendance fees, exhibitors and accommodations visit www.mblgtacc2013.org .
