Students from 19 different colleges around the metro area came together on Nov. 2 for the Access to Justice Conference, where they had the opportunity to listen to multiple different panelists, each of whom spoke about different topics encompassing the social justice movement. The topics presented included Gender and Sexuality, Civil Rights & Racial Justice, Criminal Justice and Immigration.

Senior Conner Suddick was instrumental in the planning and coordination of the Access To Justice Conference. “I don’t think [Minnesota colleges] collaborate to the full extent that we could,” Suddick said.

Suddick worked in close collaboration with Andrea Duarte-Alonso, a senior at St. Catherine University. Both were inspired to create this event for personal and academic reasons. Duarte-Alonso, who has been involved in immigration justice work since her first year at college, cites her advocacy work as the reason why she is in college.

“For years I have wanted to create an outreach to students who have the same interests as I do,” Duarte-Alonso said.

She explained that she hopes to bring students from all around the state together to discuss justice work.

“All of our universities do some sort of justice work, but I never see it tied back together,” Duarte-Alonso said. “Why are we all doing the same work but not doing it together?”

Including speakers and the organization team, there were 181 people registered to attend the event, with only 25 percent of those people being Hamline students.

“This event isn’t just the labor of us,” Suddick said, referring to himself and Duarte-Alonso. “It is the organising team, the professors, some of the speakers have given input on the event. Everyone has informed the conference in some way. The amount doesn’t matter.”

Hamline student Amber Alme, an attendee, talked about her impression of the event.

“I think that’s just really cool that we can bring all these different students [together],” Alme said. “I hope that future events are like this as well, where it’s more student-based. A lot of the speakers are talking about how we make effective change, how we change the system.”

With the conference lasting from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., the morning and afternoon were tied together by the keynote speaker, Hamline Professor Jason Sole, who spoke about the challenges race and socioeconomic status can create when trying to access justice. In addition, he gave the audience background on the historical and present-day racism in Minnesota.

“Access to justice is blocked from every way when you’re [a] black person,” Sole said. “You’re innocent until you are proven poor.”

Sole has been a criminal justice educator for 9 years, with three of them being at Hamline. In addition to his many accomplishments, he is currently the Community First Public Safety Initiatives Director for the City of St. Paul.

After Sole’s presentation, many eager students and community members lined up to speak with him. During this time he gave out further resources, answered questions relating to his work and offered advice to a few students seeking  to move forward with their own social justice causes.

When asked what he hopes people take with them from this conference, he said that he wants people to “act in a way that feels right to you… Show up and do something for somebody else. I don’t mind using my platform to support women, or to support black people, but we all need to work on something. We all need to be focusing on injustices.”