Apparently vegans are cuter.

Or so read a T-shirt for sale Saturday at the fourth annual Conference for Conscious Living at the Technological Institute. Vendors offered vegan clothing, pastries and literature to about 150 students and visitors during the animal-rights conference organized by Justice For All and EarthSave Chicago.

The conference, held for the third time at NU, featured animal-rights speakers and a Conscious Living Fair made up of vegan organizations and businesses in Chicago.

Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was scheduled to speak at the event but canceled because of an “animal emergency” in India, said Justice For All Co-president Katie Sharkey, an Education senior.

Newkirk appeared by video during the conference to greet attendees and explain her absence. The video included a speech by Newkirk at a 2002 animal-rights event along with footage of inhumane animal treatment in various commercial industries.

In her filmed speech, Newkirk denounced cruelty to animals in the food and clothing industries and exhorted audience members to “pledge veg.”

“(Animals) are not objects. … They’re life, they’re like us,” she said. “So the greatest respect of all that we can afford them is to leave them alone.”

Kindness and compassion should not be limited to humans just because animals are different, Newkirk said.

“The test of moral fiber is to stick up for those you relate to least, those you understand minimally and those you do not think are that much like you,” she said.

Other speakers present at the weekend event included Howard Lyman, a fourth-generation cattle rancher who became a vegan activist; Jodie Wiederkehr, an activist with the organization Showing Animals Respect and Kindness; and Rae Sikora, a humane educator.

“In the past the conference has been very successful,” Sharkey said. “Our hope is that the conference will increase student awareness to animal-rights issues.”

EarthSave Chicago Chairman Kevin Read said conference organizers worked to include aspects that would appeal to a broad range of people.

“The audience ranges from being meat-eaters (who are) curious, open-minded or dragged there by friends, to long-term vegan activists,” Read said. “We’re trying to create a day that’s really inspiring, encouraging and educational for people wherever they might be on the food-choice continuum.”

College is about learning new things, synthesizing a number of perspectives and expanding world views, and this conference is a good opportunity to do that, Read said.

“If a few students come away from this conference with a new idea about human relations to animals, then it will have been a success,” he said.

Several students said they did come away with new ideas about animal rights and their own lifestyle choices.

“The images and speakers were so powerful, I don’t think I’m going to be able to eat meat anymore,” said Sheerah Cole, a sophomore at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill.

Others, such as Communication sophomore Kate Doehring, said they felt encouraged by the conference and added that the speakers reaffirmed their decisions to be vegetarian or vegan.

“I’m a vegan on campus, and this conference is the one time at NU when I feel kind of supported,” said Doehring, who has attended the conference twice. “I feel stronger knowing there are people that are on the same wavelength as I am.”