Let me take you back to my first day at Georgetown. It was the first weekend of New Student Orientation, and I had moved into my room on the fifth floor of Darnall Hall the night before. But that Saturday morning, I abruptly woke up at 5 a.m. to a loud buzzing noise.
My first instinct was to cover my ears with my pillow and fall back asleep, but after a while, I finally came to my senses. I leaped out of bed and woke up my roommate. “Tommy, wake up! We gotta get out of here. We slept through the fire alarm!”
The two of us darted down the stairs and out of Darnall. When we got outside, however, we couldn’t find anyone else. Worried and confused, we slowly crept back into the building and re-entered our room. When we got back inside, Tommy turned to me and said, “Dude, that wasn’t the firm alarm. … It was your alarm clock.”
And so began my first day of college.
I tell this story because it illustrates an important lesson: Just like I couldn’t anticipate what my first morning of college would be like, there’s no way I could’ve predicted how my four years at Georgetown would ultimately unfold. In many ways, I entered Georgetown seeking a degree but left with a values-based education that taught this Hoya about the importance of dialogue in our much-too-divided world. For me, this passion took root through my involvement with the Georgetown University Lecture Fund.
I originally joined the Lecture Fund, I must admit, with the hope of skipping the lines at high-profile campus events. Much more than that, however, the unanticipated benefit was belonging to a student organization whose members dedicate their time and energy to promoting thoughtful dialogue and debate on campus. After a while, I started organizing my own lectures, inviting a diverse range of speakers including an anti-human-trafficking activist, former Negro League baseball players and documentary filmmakers. But I soon began to wonder: Did the Lecture Fund really enlighten and enrich the minds of the student body, or did we simply bring in speakers who preached to the choir and failed to challenge conventional wisdom?
My conclusion: The Lecture Fund has steadily improved over the years in bringing an impressive array of speakers to campus and now stands as perhaps the top student-run college speakers bureau in the nation. Naturally, our ability to set off campus debates often occurs, most visibly but not exclusively, through our more controversial events, including lectures by Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society; Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps; and, yes, our favorite celebrity-turned-whale-activist, actress Hayden Panettiere. Although disagreement elicits strong emotions, these emotions force us to think. As chair of the Lecture Fund this year, I’ve tried to build upon our upward trajectory by expanding our offerings, organizing lectures with the presidential candidates and planning events jointly with all corners of the campus community, including partners such as the Georgetown Israel Alliance and the athletic department.
By working on the Lecture Fund, I’ve realized that Georgetown at its best operates as a two-way street, facilitating a healthy exchange of ideas and opinions in the context of an intellectual community. Encouraging dialogue and building bridges through the organization’s efforts has made me hopeful that we can build a Georgetown culture of, as Martin Luther King, Jr. once described it, “creative tension,” where we are able to bounce off each other’s ideas and identities in realizing his ultimate vision of a “beloved community.” And, if we’re able to create such a community at Georgetown, what’s stopping us from doing the same beyond Healy Gates?
Mahen Gunaratna is a senior in the School of Foreign Service.
