By JESSALYN KIRCHHOFF
Tiger Media Network
The Criminal Justice Club is a club on the FHSU campus that promotes professionalism through career opportunities for service, education, and networking. This weekend, the Criminal Justice Club will be combining all three of these components by hosting the Region 3 Conference of the American Criminal Justice Association (ACJA).
This conference is set for Thursday through Sunday. Registration begins on Thursday and the competition will start on Friday and continue through Saturday.
Throughout this conference participants will compete in written testing, including topics about Corrections, Criminal Law, Juvenile Justice, Policing, and ACJA Knowledge. Other areas of competition that will take place over the weekend include scholarly poster presentations and skills-based activities including crime scenes, physical agility, and firearms.
Criminal Justice Club President Madelyn Underwood describes one of her favorite events.
“All testing and skills-based competitions are individually scored except for Crime Scene, where teams of three participants have 15 minutes to process a mock crime scene and then 45 minutes to complete the reports that accompany the scene,” Underwood said.
FHSU’s Criminal Justice Club will have 20 students and two co-advisors (Ziwei Qi and Morgan Steele) compete during this conference. Criminal Justice Department Chair Tamara Lynn will not be competing in any events to ensure the integrity of the conference and to reduce the appearance of impropriety. Other chapters that will be in attendance are from Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska, and there will be one group joining from California good for a total of 90 attendees on campus for the conference.
The FHSU Criminal Justice Club has competed in regional competitions like this since the Fall of 2016. Conference locations have included Garden City, Warrensburg, MO, Lincoln, NE, and Hays. This will be the second time that FHSU has hosted an in-person conference.
The Criminal Justice Club has also attended and competed in National Conferences since 2017, excluding 2020 and 2021. During the spring of 2021, FHSU hosted a virtual conference with the same competitions.
FHSU’s Delta Tau Omega chapter of ACJA has won over 100 awards combined, along with winning over $5,000 in scholarship money.
“The National Conferences are structured like the Regional Conferences except that they last much longer, and include additional academic training on topics such as human trafficking, drug addiction, etc,” Lynn said.
In addition to competing, the Criminal Justice Club will host a documentary on Friday evening for the participants. The creator of the documentary will be the keynote speaker at Saturday evening’s banquet. Both the documentary and the speaker will be kept under wraps until the conference begins. On Sunday morning there will be a brunch, a Region 3 business meeting, and then the whole weekend ends with an awards ceremony.
There is a significant amount of planning that goes into hosting a conference of this size. Lynn maps out this journey.
“Planning for the conference began in January of this year with selecting dates for the conference, securing a block of hotel rooms, reserving rooms in the Memorial Union, and connecting with catering,” she said.
Other planning included booking a keynote speaker for the Saturday evening banquet.
Lynn goes on to explain how local law enforcement has also been involved with hosting the competition.
“In August, we met with representatives from the Fort Hays State University Police Department, Hays Police Department, Ellis County Sheriff’s Office, and Kansas Highway Patrol,” Lynn said. “We are fortunate to have the support of our law enforcement agencies that help facilitate skills-based events.”
The Hays Police Department facilitates the firearms competition, the University Police and Ellis County Sheriff’s Office partner together to facilitate the mock crime scene competition, and the Kansas Highway Patrol facilitates the physical agility competition.
Both Lynn and Underwood want to emphasize how opportunities such as this are important for promoting networking among other students and professionals from across the U.S.
“Students expand their resume with the awards they win. Activities align with course curriculums, which enhances learning,” Lynn said. “Participation also promotes development of important skill sets including leadership, written and verbal communication, and problem-solving. An indirect benefit is that students make life-long friendships from participating alongside their peers from FHSU.”
Any questions about the Region 3 Conference can be directed to the Criminal Justice Club at criminaljustice@fhsu.edu. Those interested in joining the club, can check out their TigerLink page at https://tigerlink.fhsu.edu/organization/criminaljusticeclub .