Miami Student

Issue date: 4/4/08 Section: Editorials

Monday's University Lecture Series' hosting of musician and author James McBride highlights what seems to be a continuing worry with all lectures hosted by Miami: the ability of guests to widely deviate from the advertised topic of their speeches. While McBride's visit had been billed as "Plain Talk: a Meditation on American Pop Culture," what resulted-regardless of quality-was an hour-long jazz performance interspersed with brief remarks. The Miami Student editorial board believes that the university must use this lecture as a launching point to re-examine how it interacts with the speakers that are brought in, with an overall goal of increasing communication and understanding of what topics will be discussed. Content is not the question, but forging a more efficient means of marketing lectures to the community is.

Increasing communication between the university and a speaker-or a speaker's agent-is important so that both parties are able to overtly express the expectations and direction of an event. The dissent of this editorial board highlights the necessity of a speaker to have free reign and flexibility when addressing students. Yet, while leeway is important for guests who come to campus, the main administrative focus should be shifted to the planning stages so that the title of a speech correlates to what the speaker wants to discuss, and that there is enough time to advertise the event to interested students. A student from the journalism or sociology department who attended the McBride lecture-seeing the advertisements about his work with newspapers, magazines and critiques of culture-may not have derived the same benefits from the lecture as would a student of jazz, students who may not have attended because of the title.

This board understands that the university can only do so much and that once a speaker is on stage, they have an inherent freedom of speech. But there should be more communication with guests before their arrival with agreements that clearly state the general idea of what the speaker would like to discuss. This dialogue should also include the solidification of a question and answer time so that there is audience interaction with the speaker-a staple of lecture series events that was absent from McBride's performance.

Questions of over-programming for students arise so often these days, and being unable to accurately market lecture events and speakers only adds to the confusion that an individual faces in any given week while deciding which events are worthwhile to attend. While the McBride lecture is part of a university-organized series, every organization and group that brings in speakers should realize these concepts of improving guest events. We believe that more communication will result in both more freedom for the speaker and-coupled with more research of speaker's prior event history-will allow those in charge of marketing events to students be better be able to tailor events to the community and raise attendance and enthusiasm.

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