By J. Harvard Feldhouse
A few ambitious students established a Her Campus chapter at Youngstown State University with the intent to empower and lift up collegiate women on campus.
The Her Campus magazine was founded in 2009 with its main audience geared toward college women, covering topics such as beauty, lifestyle, health, news and more.
According to the Her Campus website, the magazine outlet is the No. 1 media site for college women and has over 390 chapters nationwide.
And YSU is on its way to being the latest addition.
Rachel Durniok, a freshman pre-business major, is the Her Campus YSU president and correspondent. She transferred to YSU from West Virginia University.
During her time at WVU, she got involved with Her Campus and soon noticed YSU didn’t have a chapter.
“I really wanted to get involved as much as I could at YSU, and I actually looked at, like, the different clubs they had here and noticed that they didn’t have [Her Campus],” Durniok said. “I really enjoyed Her Campus when I was in it at West Virginia, so I thought it would be cool to bring it here.”
Durniok pitched the idea to her friends, Angela Pell, a sophomore journalism major, and Karleigh Huber, a freshman pre-nursing major, who also hold leadership roles in the chapter.
Huber said she was interested in getting involved because of her love for photography.
“[Angela] wanted to know if I’d be interested in doing pictures if this potential organization were to happen, and I was excited because literally the night before I was looking on the Her Campus website to see if YSU had a chapter,” she said. “The opportunity just fell into my lap.”
The organization quickly drew interest from other students, and the Her Campus YSU chapter already has over 15 members as of its first meeting Feb. 17.
“We got my friends together and quickly realized more and more girls were becoming interested,” Pell said. “My goal right now is to hit 30 people. … I think that’s a good number of people for a group like this so we have enough articles every week to keep putting out a great website.”
Her Campus YSU is now an official organization, but the chapter is still waiting for the Her Campus main branch to launch its subdomain website.
Pell said the chapter plans to have a wealth of content ready for publication once its website launch date is announced.
“Until then, we will be having meetings and have our team start brainstorming ideas for articles,” she said.
In addition to the online content, the chapter plans to host and participate in events on campus that raise awareness for issues affecting women, such as YSU’s annual EveryBODY Fashion Show in April.
As a women’s magazine, a central tenet is female empowerment, according to Huber.
“[Her Campus] was originally started by a community of women who, really, their central focus is just to empower young college girls,” she said. “It was created by women for women of a younger demographic to just really motivate and empower girls.”
For more information about Her Campus YSU and how to get involved, follow its Instagram, @hcyoungstownstate, Twitter, @hcyoungstown, and Facebook, Her Campus at Youngstown.