Fifteen members of the Iowa State Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Ally Alliance will have the opportunity to network and learn when they attend the Mid-West Bisexual, Lesbian, Gay, Transgender College Conference in Madison, Wis.

The conference will be held today and Saturday.

LGBTAA President Angie Chipman said the conference will feature more than 60 different presenters, including Chipman and ISU student Curt Lund, sophomore in graphic design.

Chipman, junior in psychology, said she is looking forward to presenting.

“I hope that they learn something from me,” she said.

Chipman said the topic of her forum will be homosexuality in the military, and the topic of Lund’s will be queer advertising campaigns.

Lund said he thoroughly enjoyed last year’s conference and is looking forward to this weekend.

“I expect this year to be just as great, if not better,” he said.

Lund said the conference gives the participants a “sense of energy to make positive change.”

“Hopefully, this year I’ll come back with more energy to keep working hard for the queer community,” he said.

Christina Jems, LGBTAA special projects coordinator, said she also is enthusiastic about the conference.

“I’m looking forward to learning about what’s going on in other campuses and what other groups are doing to make themselves more public,” said Jems, senior in women’s studies.

Chipman said the conference also will have several keynote speakers, two dances and a variety of shows.

Some of these keynote speakers will include Rebecca Walker, editor of Ms. Magazine; Larry Kramer, founder of ACT UP, an AIDS coalition; and Virginia Apuzzo, the national director of the National Gay-Lesbian Task Force and the highest-ranking openly lesbian official in the White House.

Jeff Sorensen, LGBTAA adviser, said this is the fifth year ISU students have attended the conference, which usually attracts about 1,300 college students from around the Midwest.

The conference was hosted on the ISU campus in 1993. Chipman said there is a possibility for it to be hosted on the ISU campus again.

“If we can get someone to go to the effort to put it together, I don’t think it would be too bad,” she said.

“People can always surprise you, and the students at ISU are pretty good about that stuff,” she said.

Chipman said this weekend’s conference will help both the students attending it and the ISU community.

“We can incorporate information that we learn at the conference in our speaker’s bureaus to make them more successful,” she said.