New to Augustana, Her Campus has begun working with students to create a safe space for women.
Her Campus is an organization with the primary focus to give a voice to women on college campuses, and has roots all over the country, now including the Augustana community. While the organization was started by a group of Harvard students as a project, it has become widespread in the U.S., and Her Campus even has chapters that are international.
Doug Tschopp, Augustana’s Her Campus faculty advisor, explains that this is Her Campus’ first year at Augustana. He said that the idea to bring Her Campus to Augustana began nearly a year and a half ago, but this past summer, with the help of Melissa Conway and Luanna Gerdemann, it became a reality.
“They had to do all this online application stuff, they had to go through an editing challenge with the national (branch of Her Campus), then they had interviews with the national organization,” Tschopp said.
According to Tschopp, apart from giving women a voice, Her Campus provides an opportunity for students to be involved in a co-curricular and professional organization.
“…You look at the national website, they like to say ‘Here is where students that have already done this are working’ and it’s like ELLE magazine,” said Tschopp. He stated that Her Campus lets students who might not be interested in news related articles try out long form and be a part of something big on campus.
Melissa Conway, an Augustana sophomore who has been involved in bringing Her Campus to the Augustana community, explains that she and Gerdemann had been really excited about bringing the organization to Augustana.
“We just really, really like the concept and so we went full force into it,” said Conway. She explains that they started the application process during the last weeks of summer.
Conway stated that Augustana’s chapter of Her Campus will begin publishing the first Tuesday of winter break, with six pieces a week on the Her Campus website. Along with the publications, Her Campus intends to bring a significant amount of awareness to their goal and obtain an idea of what their viewers here at Augustana are interested in learning about.
“You can expect a lot of content and events and publicity,” Conway said.
Her Campus hopes to allow students of all backgrounds to gain experience and share their voice through the magazine.
“I think you’re going to see like different lifestyles…represented in the writing and it’s pretty exciting to me to have this really great variety of voice,” said Tschopp. He, Conway, Gerdemann, and the magazine’s team of writers and editors will be working to make Her Campus a way for women in the Augustana community to share their voice.
