While many students headed toward exotic destinations or a familiar home, 16 students involved in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Ally Alliance (LGBTAA) took off for Michigan to participate in the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender and Ally College Conference.

The 16 ISU students were just a fraction of the more than 800 students who attended the conference between March 15 and 17.

Josh Siegel, co-chairman of the conference committee at Michigan State, said the 79 workshops and four speakers focused on a theme of student empowerment.

“We focused on spiritual, emotional and political empowerment throughout the conference,” said Siegel, a Michigan State University senior in international relations. “We wanted everyone to come together as activists to find those who might need support.”

Siegel said the workshops ran the gamut in terms of topics.

“We tried to reach a lot of different aspects of people’s lives – both on college campuses and once they are beyond that community,” Siegel said.

Workshop topics included campus environment issues, stress reduction and self esteem. They also featured creative expression such as poetry called “Transgender Monologues,” modeled after “Vagina Monologues.” A few workshops dealt with various types of spirituality, including Christianity and Buddhism.

Students were allowed to choose which workshops or speakers to attend during the three-day stay based on what they wanted to take away from the experience.

Todd Herriott, staff adviser for LGBTAA, said the conference is about moving forward with progress, looking out for the rights of students on campus and beyond.

“A large number of people are looking forward, to continue to improve the overall condition of [LGBT] people in the United States,” Herriott said. “Topics such as spirituality, violence, how financially we don’t have the same protections as heterosexual people and marriage rights and adoption laws were discussed.”

Frank Rowen, LGBTAA member and sophomore in elementary education, said he attended the conference to learn more about coalition-building on campus.

“One [political workshop] I went to was about activism in gay rights,” Rowen said. “We talked about laws enacted, advocating laws and various laws working for or against us within both the state and federal governments.”

The main thing Rowen said he gained from the conference is that many groups on college campuses have the same objective but don’t get along. Herriott said many students took that same idea with them, wanting to organize several groups together to become more socially aware.

“The conference had really good dialogue and motivated a lot of students to integrate what was discussed into their own campuses,” Herriott said.

Herriott has been a part of the conference since its birth at Drake University.

“The conference began in Illinois in 1989 and was rather small,” he said. “The next year nothing was continued, and then in 1991 several small universities gathered at Drake and the conference was born.”

Herriott said the annual conference is one of the largest Midwest conferences for LGBT students. “There are representatives of students from a lot of different states,” he said.

“This is an excellent opportunity for students to look nationwide in terms of the community they have and how each campus differs,” Herriott said. “They can look at the good acceptance they have at ISU, and how they are severely lacking in terms of support from administration and students as a whole.”