Youth to discuss challenges, solutions

Young people from around the state will converge on Philadelphia next weekend for the first-ever statewide conference created by and for LGBT youth.

The Pennsylvania Student Equality Coalition will host the Youth Action Conference from Oct. 14-16 on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.

Registration, which costs $15 and includes accommodations with Penn students as well as several meals, is open to youth of all ages, with more than 150 expected to attend. Minors must have a permission form from a parent or guardian.

PSEC, which formed this past spring, voted to go ahead with the statewide summit during an inaugural conference for organization leaders over the summer, explained PSEC executive director Jason Landau Goodman.

“We spent the summer developing our infrastructure and we’re now ready for implementation,” Landau Goodman said. “We’ve hit the back-to-school season now, so it’s time for action.”

Action will be a theme throughout the weekend, as registrants will be encouraged not to just discuss the issues facing LGBT youth in Pennsylvania, but to actually formulate ways to address those challenges in their school and campus communities.

“What we’re doing is something that hasn’t been done in a long time, a civil-rights conference,” Landau Goodman said. “We want to train and empower young people for action. We don’t have anyone telling us what to do but we’re talking about our own issues and thinking of ways to rise up and do something about them. We’re not just saying, ‘This is what’s going on’ in this intellectual framework, but are actually taking it to a level where we can go back to our communities and really accomplish things.”

The panels are divided into sections that address the LGBT youth movement both within and outside the LGBT community, the multiple identities LGBT youth hold, and on-campus concerns like gender-neutral housing and homophobia in Greek life or sports.

Each panel will feature an “expert” on a certain topic, along with a student leader. After a brief presentation, the discussion will be opened so that all participants can join the conversation.

Among the speakers are Alison Gill, public-policy manager at the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, and Tammy Simpson, mother of Brandon Bitner, the Pennsylvania teen who committed suicide last fall after pervasive bullying because of his presumed sexuality.

“Brandon’s mother is someone who’s really been affected by the issues we’re working on,” Landau Goodman said. “We want to talk about the actual on-campus events that led to his suicide and what we can do to make it stop, so it’ll be really important to hear directly from Pennsylvanians like her to take this conversation to the next level.”

In addition to the upcoming conference, PSEC is organizing nine town-hall discussions throughout the state in the coming weeks to hear directly from LGBT youth about their local concerns.

Philadelphia youth are encouraged to attend the local town hall at 7 p.m. Oct. 12 at The Attic Youth Center, 255 S. 16th St.

Conference participants can register online until Oct. 13. For more information, visit www.pennsec.org/psec-youth-action-conference/.

Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].

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