Re-location of the ASHE 2024 Conference

January 17, 2023

Dear ASHE Members-

In the summer of last year, we were informed that Louisiana was added to the list of states in which the state of California will not reimburse travel or business activities with public funds. Through the work of Executive Director Jason Guilbeau, the ASHE Board of Directors, and the ASHE Site Selection Committee, we explored not only the implications of the addition of Louisiana to the list but the reasons for the addition and their incongruence with our stated values as an association.

As such, in October, the 2022 Board of Directors voted to cancel our contract with the Hilton New Orleans Riverside for our 2024 Conference. In November, the 2023 Board of Directors voted on the recommendation from the Site Selection Committee and ASHE Executive Director Jason Guilbeau to host our 2024 conference in Minneapolis.

Below, we provide details of the considerations that we hope will be helpful to understand how we arrived at this decision. As leaders of a small and growing organization, the Board of Directors bears the responsibility for stewardship of both our values and our finances to ensure the continued vitality of the Association. Because the timing of the conference is two years away, the prudent and responsible stewardship of our financial savings, and the concretization of our values in recent years, the decision was one of complexity met with clarity.

We invite the ASHE membership to join us in affirming this decision by supporting both the 2023 and 2024 conferences by submitting proposals, encouraging colleagues and students to attend, and ultimately attending yourself. Because we know the proximity of a conference location is a great incentive to members, including cost savings, we will be extending a special discounted conference registration rate to members in Louisiana for the 2024 conference. We will follow up early in 2024 with more details.

Canceling the New Orleans Contract

The Site Selection Committee's recommendation of New Orleans as a conference site was originally made in 2017 for the 2020 conference. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 conference was shifted to a virtual format. To mitigate a financial loss, the contract for the 2024 conference in Indianapolis was canceled and New Orleans was rescheduled as the 2024 conference site. Since 2019, the Site Selection Committee has set review criteria and has excluded any states on the California travel ban list. The 2019 Site Selection Committee report can be found here.

In 2021, ASHE members D. Chase J. Catalano, Siduri Haslerig, T.J. Jourian, and Z Nicolazzo developed a statement, titled “An Affirmation of Trans Livelihood In and Beyond Postsecondary Education” which the ASHE Board, through the position taking process, approved. The statement begins with:

…hardly any field of practice, policy, or study is immune from transmisogyny, transmisogynoir, and/or trans oppression, including fields of (postsecondary) education. As a body of postsecondary educators, scholars, and policy-makers dedicated to the furthering of evidence-based paxis, the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) community should be invested in addressing the ongoing attacks levied against trans people. Not only should this be of concern because of the Association’s ongoing commitment toward diversity, but also due to the need to confront and rectify our own complicity in furthering gender-based harm through and beyond the Association.

The Position Statement addresses the spate of bans against Trans athletes, and it also calls for the Association and our members to act in accordance with our values and policies.

In May 2022, the ASHE Board of Directors approved a new Inclusion, Equity, and Organizational Diversity Policy. In this policy, ASHE committed to “...voice a collective stance against policies designed to harm the most vulnerable in higher education.”

Effective August 1, 2022, Louisiana was added to the list of states in which the state of California will not reimburse travel or business activities with public funds. From the California Attorney General’s statement:

Louisiana is being added to California’s state-funded travel restrictions list as a result of Louisiana's passage of Senate Bill 44, which was passed without the Louisiana Governor’s signature on June 6. Senate Bill 44 repeals existing protections and prevents transgender women and girls from participating in intercollegiate and interscholastic school sports consistent with their gender identity. Given the effective date for the new law, Louisiana, pursuant to AB 1887, will be added to California’s travel restrictions list on August 1, 2022.

While ASHE uses the California Travel Ban list as a proxy for states where we will not host conferences, we are also faced with the consideration that the list now includes 23 states. While the list is a helpful proxy and typically aligns with the values of ASHE, we do consider the reasons for inclusion on the list. In the case of Louisiana, the law itself and the evolving policy environment are contrary to ASHE values as stated in the Position Statement as well as in the Inclusion, Equity, and Organizational Diversity Policy.

At the same time that we were considering the impact of this new law, Louisiana policymakers, residents, and the judicial system of the state were also responding to the overturning of Roe v Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court, putting abortion access and access to related reproductive healthcare in the hands of the states. While ambiguity regarding laws within the state, and more so the city of New Orleans, initially existed, Louisiana and all states within its proximity have banned abortion. While this was not a consideration for the state’s addition to the California travel ban list, this change in access to healthcare not only contradicts our values but undermines the safety of our members who are or who may become pregnant.

Canceling this contract comes with the risk of a cancellation penalty fee. However, if the hotel is able to re-book the meeting space and hotel rooms, this fee will be mitigated; we are confident about this likelihood. The Board has earmarked funds from ASHE's savings for this potential expense. As noted in our most recent audit (available on GuideStar), ASHE remains a financially healthy organization and is able to use these savings funds.

Selecting Minneapolis for 2024

In November 2022, the ASHE Site Selection Committee met to discuss options for 2024. Due to the proximity of the dates of the conference, options were very limited. As such, we reached out to recent and upcoming host locations for bids. While San Juan was initially considered, available dates would have required us to move the conference to December. The Site Selection Committee reviewed two bids to identify a new location for the 2024 conference. They considered bids from the location for the 2023 conference, Minneapolis, and the 2025 conference, Denver.

The Site Selection Committee recommended that Minneapolis be selected as the 2024 conference location. The committee’s main considerations were:

To make a decision as soon as possible to finalize the contract and announce the decision to the membership.
The room rate for Minneapolis would be $189 per night and the Denver room rate would be $214. All else being equal, selecting Minneapolis would save attendees about $25 per night (plus taxes and fees).
Minneapolis is a central location near ASHE members from multiple colleges, universities, and organization offices, including institutions from Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas, and South Dakota, among others. Given that Minneapolis is a drivable distance from many neighboring states, accessibility to ASHE programming will be increased. Additionally, the Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport is a hub for many airlines.
The last time the ASHE Annual Conference was held in the Midwest was in Columbus, OH, in 2016. It’s been more than 30 years since ASHE was hosted in Minneapolis (1992).
To elevate and make the 50th Anniversary Conference in 2025 unique, Denver should be featured for a singular year rather than going to that specific location back-to-back.

The Board of Directors met for a special meeting in late November to discuss this recommendation. The Board voted to approve the recommendation and work began to finalize the contract.

The ASHE Site Selection Committee is chaired by Cristobal Salinas and includes member Michael Brown, graduate student member Nadeeka Karunaratne, and ASHE Executive Director Jason Guilbeau.

In the coming days, we will share our decision with political leaders in Louisiana, as well as Minnesota. We feel it is important for ASHE to not only make this decision but to communicate to those who can affect change why we have made this decision.

While this is the first time ASHE will visit a conference location for two years in a row, we are especially excited about the opportunity to develop deeper relationships with the local Minneapolis community than a single-year conference is able to afford. We hope you will commit to joining us this year, next, and for our 50th conference in 2025, and for many more to come.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to ASHE Executive Director Jason Guilbeau at jason@ashe.ws or (202) 660-4106.

Sincerely,