The Alliance for the Low-Income and First-Generation Narrative Conference will be held in various locations throughout Grounds Friday, March 22 to Sunday, March 24. With the goal to educate, empower and connect first-generation and low-income students, the conference will have a series of workshops, activities and speeches that will be attended by students and faculty from the University and 21 other institutions across the country.
The inaugural AL1GN conference took place at Barnard College two years ago and has been an annual conference since. AL1GN was founded by a student at neighboring Columbia University to offer an alternative to the an already existing and similar conference in which only FGLI students from Ivy League institutions are allowed to attend. The student’s goal of AL1GN was to permit students from a wider variety of universities to enter into the conversation.
In 2018, George Washington University took over and hosted the event, and this year, the University applied and was chosen to be the new site of the event.
Joshua Farris, fourth-year College student and co-director of the conference, played a major role in bringing the conference to Grounds. According to Farris, University President Jim Ryan’s identification as a first-generation student and prioritization of FGLI issues gave him confidence that the conference would be supported at the University.
“I went through my university career here wanting to create some sort of change, just not knowing what, and then it just hit me,” said Farris.
To make the conference accessible to anyone who wants to attend, the conference pays for the admission, housing and food of all of their attendees. All of the money to put on the event and allow these students to come is derived from fundraisers, including many of the schools within the University, the Office of the President and the Alumni Association. According to Farris, the majority of these 23 sponsors came from within the University and together provided around $67,000 for the conference, which was a much larger budget than what was available in previous years.
“If you think about the needs about FGLI students … they’re very vast because they are not a homogenous population,” Farris said. “They are a subset of different types of students.”
The University also supported the conference through various marketing strategies. Many schools within the University, including Batten, Curry and McIntire, sent out information about the conference to the entire school.
AL1GN also marketed to other schools across the country to bring in a wide variety of students. They began by reaching out to their contacts from the schools that had attended the conference in the past, but they also grew the conference this year to encompass more schools than previous conferences have. This year, students will be arriving on Grounds from schools such as Duke University, the University of Michigan and Georgetown University.
“We have support from every school and every department [within the University].” said Farris. “The founder of the conference had a lot of personal connections to Universities, so it was a mix between a local approach here as well as what he was doing.”
Despite the large amount of University support, the majority of the work for the conference was done by students. Aside from the funding and marketing help, the planning and administration was completed by the students who worked on it with the time commitment of a full-time job.
This year, there will be around 225 attendees at the conference, including students and faculty. 125 of those attendees are non-University students and 60 of those attendees are University students. There are additionally 25 to 30 non-University administrators and about six University administrators attending as well. Although AL1GN was unable to meet its original goal of 300 attendees, they were able to increase their attendance this year from previous conferences.
This year will also bring changes in the structure of conference events and proceedings. According to Farris, this year they have a more robust selection of workshops for students to attend on topics including “The Power of the Personal Narrative” and “Mental Wellness for Students and How to Ask for Help.”
Each day of the conference is themed based on the goals of that day’s workshops. The themes include understanding the identity of first-generation college students and how to practically address challenges they may face in a university setting.
“The first day is all about understanding what is FGLI’s identity, what are the problems that we face, what is AL1GN,” Farris said. “Day two is now that we understand what the problems and what this identity might mean, what are some of the solutions that exist to address these in the capacity of the workshop. Day three is now that we have some understanding and skills to address these problems, how do we take and apply these skills beyond the conference and in their own communities to create change.”
Gwen Dilworth, fourth-year College student and current director of the University’s Community Food Pantry, is one of the many student speakers at this weekend’s conference. According to Dilworth, she and Mairin Shea, a third-year Batten student and the operations manager of the food pantry, will be speaking about how they have worked with the University to eliminate food insecurity and how other college campuses can implement similar systems. In November 2017, Student Council passed a bill permitting the formation of a committee to manage the food pantry, which opened in October.
“Many students who are attending AL1GN noted that they have experienced food insecurity and want to learn more about how to advocate for resources for students facing food insecurity at their universities,” Dilworth said in an email to The Cavalier Daily. “Students of all backgrounds struggle with food insecurity in college, but FGLI students struggle with food insecurity more frequently.”
Dilworth said she hopes the workshop leaves students with tangible methods to eliminate food insecurity on their respective college campuses.
“I'm hoping that attendees leave Mairin and I's workshop with ideas about how to establish resources for students facing food insecurity on campuses, and in particular, ideas about how to establish systemic solutions to food insecurity,” Dilworth said
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