Caroline Trausch, sophomore biology major, talks about her experience over the weekend at Wichita State attending the Kansas Catholic College Convention. Emporia State will host next year’s annual conference.
Lingzi Su/The Bulletin
Emporia State students represented the Didde Catholic Campus Center at the Kansas Catholic College Student Convention in Wichita this weekend. This year, the conference was hosted by the Newman Center at Wichita State, and around 300 students, priests, guest speakers and faculty attended this year’s conference.
“Catholic students from different colleges in Kansas get together these weekends to grow in their faith and get to find other people their age in college that want to grow in their faith as well,” said Caroline Trausch, sophomore biology major. “It helps students to get to know not only the other Catholic students here at our own organization, but it also helps us to get to know students from other colleges around Kansas dealing with the same issues.”
During the conference, students participated in Mass, prayer, group talks, adoration, ice-breakers and a formal dance and dinner.
Katelyn Real, sophomore psychology major, who attended the conference hosted by Benedictine College in Lawrence last year, said she was very excited to be able to attend again this year. For her, it was a great opportunity to meet people from other colleges.
“You get to see other campuses that have a strong Catholic community just like you do,” Real said. “It’s really fun to be able to interact.”
KCCSC is hosted by different universities each year, and ESU will host next year. The last time ESU hosted the conference was in 2007. The anticipated site for the next year’s conference is Topeka.
“I (am) so excited because we are going to host it,” said Sanghoon Baek, senior business major. “(But) it’s kind of challenging because we don’t have as many (Catholic) people as other colleges. Hopefully, if we do things right, we can get more people involved and make something happen next year.”
Baek said that although he doesn’t consider himself a perfect Catholic, he has been trying to be a good Catholic through learning about the faith ever since he converted to the religion.
“I am really excited to help host it next year, and, hopefully, we can bring some new speakers I haven’t seen before,” Real said.
For more information about this year’s conference, go to Catholicshockers.com/kccsc.