Futures Feature: Her Campus unites and encourages women
Her Campus is a worldwide online magazine written by college journalists and an online community for college women. It serves as a place of empowerment for women and a launchpad for careers in the media world. Her Campus MNSU covers local businesses, profiles students and faculty, and offers helpful tips about nutrition, relationships, careers, and much more.
The MNSU chapter of Her Campus began in Fall semester of 2015. Shaela Nelson, the president and campus correspondent for the chapter, said, “One morning last spring I was procrastinating [while] studying for a final exam and decided instead to read articles on my Facebook news feed. I found Her Campus to be very interesting and relate-able so I took the dive and applied to start a chapter. Now, here I am! I couldn’t have imagined it becoming this big.”
Organization and flexibility are key to smooth production for Her Campus MNSU. They have an executive team of twelve, as well as staff writers. Each writer signs up for articles two weeks prior to their Tuesday deadline, and they are free to write about nearly any subject. When different writers submit their work to the developmental director each Tuesday, she returns them to the writers by Friday.
Nelson is in charge of scheduling the articles for publication on Saturday and Sunday. Both the executive team and the entire staff have a weekly meeting, and the events and marketing committees also convene for planning purposes.
Her Campus MNSU plans to host a conference in Fall 2016, one modeled off a national Her Campus conference that happens every summer in New York City. Currently, Her Campus MNSU is not directly involved with any nation-wide projects. “There isn’t any project in specific that we are working on nationally because we prefer to get our members involved locally,” said Nelson.
Empowerment is the core of everything Her Campus stands for. “They stand up for all types of women no matter what your walk of life is, and for me this is the most important aspect. It is a place that you can be who you are, with no judgment,” said Elizabeth Lloyd, Vice President of the chapter. Nelson agreed. “For me, it has taught me a lot about myself and that yes, there is a glass ceiling for women to succeed, and yes, I am going to shatter that.”
Her Campus MNSU is currently planning three large-scale events and are staunch supporters of the Safe Bar Initiative in Mankato. They also promote college events from other departments on their website, especially events from the Women’s Center. They hope to continue expanding and inspiring in the years to come.
Nelson said, “We try not to focus on inequalities as much as we focus on simply empowering each other. I recently had our members take a survey and every single person said what they liked most about Her Campus is that it’s an empowering environment of women who encourage and support each other. If that doesn’t say something, I don’t know what does.”