The San Diego Conference in Retrospect

A few years back, Kathy Sideli pointed out to me that our Lesbigay SIG grows better and stronger every year. The conference in San Diego this year was definite proof of this. It also seemed to me that the SIG is more active and definitely very visible. The conference this year was a very busy one for the SIG and its members. The officers and Board of Advisors met the night before our general business meeting to discuss and outline the general theme of the general business meeting. The main topic of dis cussion was the NAFSA conference site resolution and site selection and the SIG's response.

On May 31st the SIG held its general business meeting. We counted almost 100 people in attendance, one of the largest ever SIG meetings. When attendees who were attending their first Lesbigay SIG meeting were asked to raise their hands about 30 people held up their hands. The new members were welcomed with loud applause. Thanks to Scott King of Old Dominion University we had copies of a New Member's Guide for them. The guide provides information about our mission, our working guidelines, instructions o n how to access our web site and the Rainbow listserve, a bibliography of gay and lesbian resources, a listing of the officers and Board of Advisors, and numerous articles from past SIGnals newsletters. The guide, as well as the brochure, will be updated regularly and made available for the annual conference and for people to take to the Regional conferences.

During the regular business meeting, an election of a new co-chair was held. Julie Trimpe of the Institute for the International Education of Students was elected to the two-year post. The other officers are: Joe Murnan, Co-chair 1999-2001; Susan Cart y and Peter Kerrigan, Co-editors; Rick Russo, Treasurer; Kathleen Sideli, Web Site Manager; and Daniel DeSoto, Listserve Manager. In addition to elections, volunteers for the Board of Advisor were sought. This year, the number of advisors grew from 8 to 1 2. In addition to its growth in number, the board continued to diversify. The SIG is very proud of the diversity that our board represents. We now have new members on the board from Japan and Mexico, joining our members from the United Kingdom, Canada and the U.S.

The meeting then centered on NAFSA's conference resolution and site selection. Because of a major break down in communications, the officers felt that it was necessary to meet the next morning and prepare a statement to be read at the NAFSA business me eting. The statement was written by Bo Keppel, Immediate Past Co-chair, and read by Joe Murnan and Julie Trimpe during the business meeting. Since then, the NAFSA Board of Directors has implemented a routing process which will bring all site proposals to the Diversity Committee and require that all proposals include evidence of non-discriminatory practice within the Request for Proposal. Julie and I have since sent a letter to the Board of Directors recommending that they highlight the evidence of non-dis criminatory practice in the conference materials to demonstrate NAFSA's respect for its diversity. We have also recommended that the Diversity Committee be expanded and that its work be well publicized to the NAFSA membership.

We have also collected proposals from members on ways to raise the consciousness of the NAFSA membership to GLBT issues. Some of the proposals are:

• Encourage Human Rights Group or Amnesty International's OUTfront Program to have a booth at the conference exhibition. We might propose to co-host the booth with them.
• Staff a SIG information table near the conference registration area.
• Reach out to GLBT students, advisors and educators in all conference host cities. Invite them to attend the SIG business meeting and have them give our members an update on their activities and the environment.
• Suggest plenary speakers to NAFSA. We would suggest speakers who are active in education and GLBT issues. Possible speakers suggested so far are Judy Shepard and Congressman Gerrold Nadler of NY, sponsor of the Partner Immigration Act of 2000 legislat ion.
• Have more outreach at Regionals. The SIG would identify one or two SIG members for each region to be Regional Representatives. We could consider changing our Working Guidelines to make the Regional Representatives a permanent group within the SIG. The y could schedule and conduct SIG meetings at regional conferences and/or distribute SIG brochures and SIG New Member's Guides.

In addition to the meetings and social event, SIG members also presented a panel discussion and a Region VIII Highlight Session. At the Just How Multicultural Are We? GLBT International Educators Speak Out panel discussion four gay, lesbian and transg endered educators shared their experiences and offered suggestions for making international education more inclusive. The discussion drew a standing room only crowd and offered attendees the opportunity to share their experiences and suggestions, as well.

Following the panel discussion Julie Trimpe and Ted Burnes presented their Region VIII Highlight: Education Abroad and Reentry-LGBT Issues session. The large number of attendees learned important GLBT issues related to study abroad reentry issues. Jul ie and Ted presented information from research that investigated reentry experiences of returned students. The attendees then had the opportunity to discuss issues relevant to GLBT students studying abroad and ways in which to address these issues in thei r study abroad offices.