Thursday, April 9, 2009

Financial Issues, Clearly

Despite months of anticipation and planning, Seattle University's Empower Conference-scheduled for this summer-was canceled due to a lack of expressed interest and financial concerns, locally and nationally.

The event would have been the 5th annual LGBTQ conference for Jesuit Universities.
The focus of the conference was to be on queer community empowerment and, among many topics, included discussions on interracial dating, global issues, the drug scene, expectations and relationships.
"My original vision for the conference was […] to look at the tensions within the community," said Laurie Murphy, junior creative writing major who was in charge of conference planning. "There are a lot of tensions within the community that people don't talk about."

But due to low registration from Jesuit universities across the country, Murphy and fellow planning committee members decided to postpone the conference.

"We'd rather save up to a time when the school can put on a full-blown conference," said Murphy.

Murphy had planned to approach ASSU for $2,000 in financial support; however the decision to cancel Empower occurred before the final appropriations meeting.

Seattle U's Office of Multicultural Affairs was going to provide logistical support for the conference.

"The conference was canceled this year with the sincere intent on picking it up in the future. Our office is committed to supporting Empower and seeing it happen here on campus," said Ryan Hamachek, program coordinator for OMA.
He also said the cancellation of the Empower conference was in large part due to the national economic trend. Many Jesuit universities across the country could not afford to send a large delegation of students to Seattle U.
Despite the cancellation of the conference, OMA and the conference planning committee are intent on putting their work to use. In lieu of the program, Murphy and Hamachek have been discussing the creation of a national online queer resource for Jesuit higher education under the name Empower.

Read the full piece (here)

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