For all the undergrads that have been shut out of speaking events, Columbia College Student Council has a new lecture series in the works.
CCSC has developed a program called the Honorary Lecture Series, which will be piloted on April 19 with a speech from Dean Michele Moody-Adams and will begin officially at the start of the fall 2010 semester. This program has been in the pipeline since the fall semester, and the council plans to unveil all of the details of the plan to the student body at the event.
Students have complained in the past about limited access to headlining events at the University, events like ServiceNation—a forum which brought then-senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain to campus to talk about community service—where tickets are limited and distributed by a lottery system among the staff, faculty, and students of the University.
The student body would vote on speakers, who would then be invited to campus. Sue Yang, CC ’10 and CCSC president, said that next fall, students will be able to nominate anyone they think should be a keynote speaker with a paragraph explaining why they should be nominated. The top five submitted speakers will be submitted to vote by the student body, which will rate them. A committee will then review the nominees and invite them to campus to speak.
Yang stressed that the speakers will not be Columbia-affiliated. “For this lecture series, we’re focusing on bringing speakers who are non-CC related—we don’t want to cannibalize Class Day speakers—and this is an opportunity to go beyond the University. We also have to think about how this will impact other clubs that bring speakers,” she said.
The program is meant in part to provide greater access to events that students seem to be interested in. “We’re trying to tap into something that’s core to being at Columbia—being engaged. We saw at the Ahmadinejad speech and ServiceNation that students really turn out to these events … so we want to tap into that,” Yang said.
Two-thirds of the tickets will be allotted for Columbia College students, while the other one-third will be distributed via lottery to students of the other University schools as well as faculty, staff, and alumni. According to Evelyn Phan, CC ’10 and vice president of the 2010 class council, it is undecided whether the council will be paying an honorarium to speakers, but if the council were to charge in the future, it would be an affordable fee. Phan says the cost will be minimal, “because we hope that with each succeeding year the HLS will grow in prestige and serve as an effective platform for the speakers to gain publicity, hence negating the need for an honorarium.”
Brandon Christophe, CC ’12 and a CCSC representative for the class of 2012, hopes this will allow Columbia College students to participate in events that had previously been exclusive.
“Unfortunately many of the events are not open to undergraduate students or are restricted, only allowing a small undergraduate population to attend, such as the visit of Gates and Buffet or World Leaders Forums. As a result, we are seeking to create an event that caters to undergraduate students and their interests,” he said.
Adam Valen Levinson, CC ’10, said it’s a nice change for Columbia College students who have had less success with other limited events at the University. “It’s a great opportunity for students to recover from the rejection of fireside chats and Urban New York,” he said.
Students who are left out of the mix are less excited. “Personally, I understand logistically there are more students at CC, but that being said, it makes me uncomfortable. Why only let in one-third of the rest of the University? It’s kind of hypocritical,” Daly Franco, BC ’12, said.
Philip Drake, a graduate student in strategic communications, disagreed. “It sounds fair to me,” he said. “Columbia College is the majority of the student body.”
Jeff Schwartz, CC ’10, is reserving judgment. “I think how exciting it is will depend on what speakers they get,” he said.
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