One of Northwestern's newest student groups is devoted to journalism and the LGBT community. Students interested in the gay community and its issues and news will now have a new student group; a chapter of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association is being formed under the leadership of Medill senior Ben Kwan. With the help of Medill Professor Doug Foster, Kwan has been setting up meetings and informal information sessions to inform the campus of this new group. "The immediate response was really great, it actually surprised me," said Kwan of the initial feedback he got after sending out and e-mail about the group.The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association is a national organization with twenty-four chapters across the country and with international affiliations in Canada and Germany. The Association's website (www.nlgja.org) says it's "an organization of journalists, online media professionals, and students that [work] from within the journalism industry to foster fair and accurate coverage of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues." Its goals are to provide opportunities for journalists who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, to strengthen the identity of these journalists in the newsroom, and ensure that the highest ethical standards in journalism are applied to coverage of LGBT issues in the news. The group acts as a network for LGBT journalists across the country, providing a source of solidarity and mentoring to those journalists who may not feel included in the journalism community.
Kwan believes the group's presence on campus would fill a void in the Medill community by addressing the issue of LGBT journalists. "A lot of the LGBT groups on campus fulfill the activist roles of the community. The formation of this group is to occupy a different niche. It's a professional organization to help journalism students adjust to the society of professional journalism. I think it's important to have a group like this represented on campus especially when there is a national organization because there are lots of conference opportunities and scholarships that students can take advantage of."
Matthew Jimenez, a Medill freshman, agrees. He was definitely interested when he first heard about the new group. "I had heard about a lot of the other groups that were for journalists according to ethnic background. I thought that a group like this would have people with more of a common interest than where their ancestors came from. I thought it would be a lot more interesting of a connection." Jimenez agreed with Kwan that the LGBT groups of campus do a lot for the campus as a whole, but none particularly focus on Medill. He believes the group would gain membership because "it's an issue that seems relevant in today's climate with the ban on gay marriage going through."
This is not the first time, however, that this group has tried to establish itself on the Northwestern campus. In the winter of 2002, Jennifer Chapin Harris, a 2001 Medill graduate, tried to seek ASG funding for the group. In an article from the Medill website (http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/inside/2000/nlgja.html), Harris says that Northwestern "would be a great place to have [a student chapter] because it's one of the best journalism schools, and the university is so big." Harris' group would focus on "how people of various sexual orientations are portrayed in the media." The group, however, never seemed to get off the ground, despite an initial interest.
Kwan has more hope for the group this time. He is strong in his determination to establish the group and secure its place in the Northwestern community for years to come. Kwan believes a chapter of NLGJA would help to make students in Medill more comfortable in their acclamation to life in college. "When a student comes to Medill, or to college in general, who still isn't out of the closet, one of the major concerns is how being out or open is going to effect his/her career in the future. I think it'd be great if incoming freshmen could see that there's a [group] in Medill, that you can be out and comfortable in the newsroom. I think that would have been beneficial to me as a freshman."
Jimenez agrees. During his new student week, he noticed that "the issue of being gay or lesbian or bisexual never came up at all, especially not with Medill students." He also believes that the presence of NLGJA on campus will help prospective students feel more at ease while touring the school. "When prospective students are around, if they see flyers [for this group] it might make them more comfortable to come to Medill knowing there's a group like that."
With strong student support for the chapter, Kwan's group looks like it might have more success than Harris' did back in 2002. After sending the initial e-mail, Kwan received responses from Dean Loren Ghiglione and Loraine Hasebe, the Director of Journalism Career Services, praising him for taking the initiative in forming a group relating to the LGBT issue. The group has gotten only positive responses from the student body, and, as Kwan puts it, "what negative feedback is there to give?"
Anna Geller is a Weinberg sophomore. E-mail her at a-geller@northwestern.edu.
