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A group of women rally to create an alternate event after Ohio University cancels its annual women’s conference
By: David Forster
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — Within days after Ohio University announced it was canceling an annual women’s conference planned for this month in Lancaster, a group of community leaders came together and planned an alternate event.
The university made its announcement Thursday, citing concerns that its “Celebrate Women” conference might run afoul of new federal guidance on discrimination and efforts to eliminate programs and initiatives that promote diversity.
The next day, Angela Krile, owner of Krile Communications in Lancaster, got an email from Kim Barlag, president of the Pickerington Area Chamber of Commerce.
Krile was a sponsor of the planned “Celebrate Women” conference and was to be a panelist for a session on marketing best practices. Barlag was reaching out to other women as well who were going to be part of the conference.
“I shed a few tears, and I said action makes you feel better than anything, and lets’s see what we can do to salvage it,” Barlag said.
Krile said emails started flying Friday afternoon and by Sunday, a group of women from local businesses and nonprofit groups got together on a conference call and planned the substitute event.
It will feature many of the same speakers, sessions and panelists as the original event, but they had to pare back some of the programming and shift some things around because they didn’t have as much space, including rooms for breakout sessions.
The original event was going to be held on the university’s Lancaster campus. The conference will now be at the Crossroads Event Center in Lancaster.
The conference schedule and information on registration are available through the Pickerington chamber’s website.
Krile said an outpouring of community support made it possible to pull together a substitute conference on such short notice.
“We have so many sponsors that have just sort of overwhelmingly come out to support this,” she said.
Sponsors have contributed more than enough money to cover the cost of the event, and any extra funds will be donated to a local nonprofit, Krile said. She mentioned a domestic violence shelter as one option.
This would have been the 19th year for the university’s “Celebrate Women” conference. Krile said that while the university’s announcement last week came as a shock and a disappointment, what happened in the days following shows just how important the event has become to the community.
“We’re not going to say, ‘Oh bummer, this sucks, this is terrible,’” Krile said. “We said, “‘Oh, this is not cool. Let’s figure out a way we can make this happen.’”