Stop Conference
STOP Conference STOP (STUDENTS TOGETHER OPPOSING PREJUDICE)
The Annual STOP Conference takes place each year in January on the Friday before the start of the
spring semester at Siena College.
Siena College, Sarazen Student Union
Friday January 18th
Time: 8:00 AM – 2:00 PM
Each year 200 students from 20 Capital Region Middle Schools and High Schools participate in an
anti-bias conference at Siena College. This conference is sponsored by the Martin Luther King, Jr.
and Coretta Scott King Lecture Series and is organized and run by the Anti-Defamation League’s
(ADL) A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE® Institute.
STOP is made possible by the sponsorship from Ray Newkirk and Cristy D'Ambrosio
Students meet in small groups and are involved in activities, workshops, discussions and action
planning around issues of prejudice, tolerance, and respect. Students attend this conference to
actively work in groups with adult leaders to discuss ways they can become more involved and to
help extinguish intolerance, bullying, and discrimination. Students are led by trained ADL facilitators,
but there is ample input from the students themselves as they make plans to bring what they learned
back to their schools.
Advisors - counselors or teachers - from the schools also take part in their own workshop where they are
guided through the themes of the day with a focus on becoming equipped with the tools to bring the lessons learned back to their schools.
It is our hope that each year that as a result of the conference, Siena sends these students back to their
schools as knowledgeable allies for people in need. Some of them will no doubt become student leaders
and help bring about the change we all want to see.
The following schools sent groups of students to the STOP workshops in 2010:
Ballston Spa Middle School Chatham Middle School
Colonie Central High School Columbia High School
Coxsackie-Athens High School Goff Middle School
Hoosick Falls Central School Lansingburgh High School
Mohonasen High School New Lebanon Junior-Senior High School
Northville Central School Saratoga Springs High School
Schalmont High School Shenendehowa High School
Van Antwerp Middle School
For information on participating in next year’s workshop, please e-mail Lynn Rogers at lrogers@siena.edu
