Students step off of their bus and walk into the Kent State student center. As they are walking in, the conference they have come for has already started. Students quickly grab name tags and write down their name and pronouns. They find a table to sit at and listen to a speaker talk about trailblazers in the LGBTQ community. On the table there is a packet listing the people the speaker talks about. 

After he is done talking, a few college students talk about their experiences as queer students at Kent State. They then open the conversation up for the high school students attending the conference to ask questions. 

After the college students answered all the questions, the speaker encouraged the high school students to walk around to the different tables set up around the large room they are in. The tables offer a wide variety of information and games for the students to play. High school students attending the conference and also employees and students from Kent State put together the tables before the conference. 

The students walk around to each table and complete activities such as LGBTQ trivia, painting rocks and making their own pins. After they complete each activity, the students receive a ticket that they can cash in for different prizes such as stickers, t-shirts and lanyards. 

After all of the students received the prizes they earned, they sat down for lunch. The students are encouraged to sit with other high schoolers from different schools to meet new people. 

To finish out the day, the students listened to a speech given by a drag queen. She spoke about her life and how she got a doctorate and then let students ask her questions. Right before the students had to get back on their buses and return to their high schools, she performed for them to end the conference. 

On November second, members of the Spectrum club at Revere High School traveled to Kent State to attend the GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) Youth Conference. 

Amy Fagnilli, the adviser of the Spectrum club, said that she wanted the club to go to this conference for a few different reasons but mainly so they could meet other clubs like them. 

“The conference is presented by GLSEN . . . we want to support GLSEN, but it’s [also] a good opportunity for our spectrum group to meet and see other groups from other high schools and get more information. It’s also just a day to feel like, ‘Hey, we’re not the only Spectrum club in the whole United States’,” Fagnilli said. 

Fagnilli explained how she signed up for the conference and that GLSEN made it very easy and accessible for the club to come. 

“It was extremely casual. They were like, ‘Fill out this Google form and tell us if you’re interested. How many kids do you think you’re going to bring? Okay, when you show up, make sure everybody has $5 for their fee’,” Fagnilli said. 

    Junior Sage Owens, the president of Spectrum, spoke about the Share Fair that GLSEN had. It was a time during the conference where high school students and students and employees from Kent State set up tables for the attendees of the conference to walk around and see. 

“We had the Share Fair, which had different booths from different schools. We got to talk with other GSAs [Gay Straight Alliances].  And we also learned information from each booth.There were symbols of LGBTQ in history and stuff like that,” Owens said. 

Fagnilli said that the Share Fair was her favorite part of the conference. She liked that the students had the opportunity to create something for the conference. 

“I really liked that the groups had the option to bring a display of some kind . . . so it was made by students and then the students could walk through, look at the displays and talk to each other. Some of them were set up as games. Some of them were just set up as information,” Fagnilli said.

She explained that the reason she enjoyed this portion of the conference so much was because it was interactive. 

“I thought that [the Share Fair] was really good because it gave the people that were going to the conference a chance to be part of the conference rather than just sitting there listening,” Fagnilli said. 

Revere’s Spectrum club had their own table at the conference. Alecia Kunka, the board member of Spectrum who runs their social media accounts, organized their table with help from a few more members in the club. She created a poster board with information about LGBTQ characters in different books, movies and tv shows. She explained some of the examples she put on it. 

“There was a article about how Velma is officially a lesbian according to the last Halloween Scooby Doo movie. And there was one on Oscar [from the Office] . . .  And on the other side, there was a section about books. One was the Grimrose Girls . . . then there was also Heartstopper, which is a graphic novel,” Kunka said. 

Kunka explained why the club chose this topic for their table. 

“[I did it so people] know that they’re validated, just so that they know there’s other people like them,” Kunka said. 

Kunka also spoke about how the other people at the conference reacted to her poster board. 

“A lot of people loved it. A lot of people were very surprised because they didn’t know about how Velma was officially lesbian . . . and a lot of book lovers, they really loved seeing the Grimrose Girls; they thought it was really interesting,” Kunka said. 

She said that the reason she believes the book, the Grimrose Girls, was so well liked by students at the conferences was because of the way it portrayed its LQBTQ representation. 

“It’s a normal book about a murder mystery kind of thing, but it just casually incorporated LGBTQ characters . . . it’s how it should be, just casually,” Kunka said. 

Both Kunka and Owens said that their favorite part of the conference was the speaker and performer at the end of the conference. Owens explained how she had never experienced anything like it before so it was very enjoyable. 

“It was absolutely amazing because I never really had met a drag queen or heard a drag queen speak, perform, any of that. And I got to talk to her one-on-one and I also got to see her perform and all of that, which was really amazing,” Owens said. 

Owens said that her overall opinion of the conference was very positive. She would love to return again and hopes that next year, the club will have a bigger group of students to go with.