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Lecture Fund Defends Choice of Speaker
Nearly 500 Hoyas took time out of their weekends to attend Sunday’s Lecture Fund event featuring Hayden Panettiere in Gaston Hall. The turnout speaks for itself in terms of what the Lecture Fund seeks to achieve: to educate, to enlighten and to entertain the campus community. It just so happens that this event accomplished all three.
Hayden Panettiere is a legitimate activist, even if she is not a scholarly expert on the topics of saving the whales, or getting out the vote. Oftentimes, celebrity activists shape popular culture as much — or more than — politicians and academics. Should the Lecture Fund deprive Georgetown students the opportunity to form their own opinions on the causes these activists promote merely because of their status as celebrities? Perhaps the Lecture Fund should refocus its efforts and only invite speakers with PhDs to campus. Should the Lecture Fund revoke all of its invitations to attractive women? Evidently, the Hoya Editorial Board believes that they have nothing special to say.
The Lecture Fund realized the possibility that many students would attend the “Save the Whales Again!” event for Hayden Panettiere, and not for the content of her speech. However, it is incontestable that the majority of students left that lecture more aware of an issue than they had been previously. Certainly, that seems to be the whole point of celebrity activism — employing fame and name recognition to increase awareness of an issue or a cause. The Lecture Fund recognized that there was significant interest for this event among the student body and sought to cater to that interest. If the Editorial Board considers that motivation a fault then perhaps it needs to reevaluate its thoughts on the role of student groups at Georgetown.
With that in mind, the Lecture Fund is always interested in receiving students’ suggestions for speakers. To suggest a speaker, or to find out more about our organization, please e-mail us at lecturefund@georgetown.edu.
Mahen Gunaratna (SFS ’08), Chair
Jessica Schachter (COL ’08), Vice Chair for External Affairs
Georgetown University Lecture Fund
Jan. 31, 2008
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You invited someone with no academic credentials to speak about a complex environmental issue. The vast majority of the people who came to the lecture were there not for whales but to gawk. If you were serious about environmentalism, you would bring serious contributors to the debate. You didn't. As much as you try to defend this actress, she is just that, an actress. Bring her back for a seminar on how to portray a teenager in TV dramas. Leave environmentalism for the adults.
She was wearing a turtleneck! What a waste of an hour of my life. Can we get paris hilton or jenna jameson to come speak? I mean, as long as we're pandering to the all-too-Georgetown habit of objectifying women, why not bring in someone who is a REAL professional at being a sec object to a horde of spoiled uni brats.
Have we forgotten what student groups at Georgetown are about? Since when has the Lecture Fund because the prestige-increasing arm of Georgetown? Lecture Fund exists, just as the chair said, to educate and entertain students. Regardless of "academic credentials" the Lecture Fund put on an event that drew out and entertained 500 Georgetown students. There are few events on campus outside the Men's Basketball team that can claim that feat. The Lecture Fund did just its job: it brought a speaker to campus that many students wanted to hear. God forbid that she was attractive.
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