This Saturday the annual Social Justice Summit will take place in hopes of changing the world beginning at Iowa State.

Pre-registration for the summit is required and can be accessed online at the Student Activities Center at www.sac.iastate.edu. The program will run from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Memorial Union.

The summit will feature a variety of topics and discussions by speakers including: “Monsters We Make: Understanding Privilege;” “Bias and the Ways We Other;” “Collaborative Leadership and Campus Climate Discussion;” “Navigating Tough Conversations: Social Awareness and Identity:” “Your Spaces Too: (Re)imagining the College Campuses for Underrepresented Students;” “Advocating for Justice and Equity Within the Walls of Government;” “Who tells Your Story?: Partnering with University Archives to Shape the Historical Record;” “We Need to Talk About Gender: Identifying Gender-Based Themes of Social Support and Conflict in Programs and Organizations;” “Sometimes You’re a Caterpillar: A Workshop on ‘one up one down’ Identities;” and “The Impact of Community in Social Justice.”

The slogan of this year’s summit is “defying our reality beyond the status quo.” This summit was created in order to better equip and prepare students at Iowa State to handle social justice issues when they occur, which is ever prevalent in recent on-campus issues.

This year’s summit is organized by the Student Activities Center, the Department of Residence, the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs and the Margaret Sloss Center for Women and Gender Equity.

From 10 to 11 a.m., the keynote opener, Vanessa McNeal, will speak in the South Ballroom of the Memorial Union.

Breakout One will consist of four sessions from 11:10 a.m. to 12:10 p.m. Lunch will occur from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in the coalition building.

The second breakout will consist of four sessions from 1:40 to 2:40 p.m. The advocate panel will take place from 2:50 to 3:50 p.m. and the summit will conclude with the assessment from 3:50 to 4 p.m.

Specific goals for the summit, according to the events calendar, include: “To allow students to learn from each other in a safe environment and diverse setting; allow participants the opportunity to learn more about ‘who they are’ and ‘what they bring’ to the ISU campus; provide opportunities for students to develop personal goals and an action plan in the areas of diversity, multiculturalism and social justice; provide an opportunity for participants to build coalitions with students ‘similar to’ and ‘different from’ themselves to achieve mutual goals for social change; create specific action steps as a group in order to have short term and long term goals and to connect, reflect, network and commit to social change through their personal action plan, following the Social Justice Summit.”