Campus Progress held their 4th Annual National Youth Journalism Conference, July 9th in Washington, DC. The event featured such journalists as Ana Marie Cox, founding editor of Wonkette and a national correspondent for Air America, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher for The Nation, and Christopher Hayes, Washington editor for The Nation, among many others. The conference also offered beat workshops, such as environment, economy, and domestic policy, as well as skill workshops which featured such topics as blogging, interviewing and generating story ideas, and designing online slideshows, to name a few.

I got the chance to speak with different participants from the conference including Ariel Boone, a third year student and out senator at University of California-Berkeley, a 5-star institution on our Campus Climate Index.

Boone came to the conference due to her interest in Campus Progress and desire to meet Ana Marie Cox. I asked her: how do you feel this conference is helping the LGBTQ community?

She replied with, "It is helping. There was a LGBTQ and faith dialogue yesterday*. But, at this conference more issues could have been mentioned, such as Don't Ask, Don't Tell and hate crimes. [There also were] not many discussions about people of color."

Boone said she learned skills that can be taken back to her campus. She learned how to find information regarding university spending practices and discovered that she should place "more focus on what people [are] already doing [to] avoid redundancy."

*- Boone is referring to the Campus Progress National Conference held Wednesday, July 8th.

For more information about Boone's Blog or Campus Progress:
Boone's Blog features pieces on LGBTQ issues, sexism, and social justice.

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