So Secretary of State Colin Powell came to Princeton, but for most of the student body, he may as well have been speaking 10,000 miles away. We were as much a part of the experience as we'd have been watching him on CNN any other day of the week. And I'm sorry but the lure of the simulcast in McCosh 10 with free Panera bread simply didn't pass muster. As I am now learning, with the politics involved in getting one of those precious seats in Richardson, I would have had more of chance of having him accept a personal invite to my dorm room than getting a ticket for his speech on Friday.
I was not alone in my frustration: From my suite of six guys, all of whom applied for the pre-speech talk or the address itself, none of us won tickets to hear him speak. More than 2,000 students and faculty entered into the lottery to hear the lecture, and as it turns out, there were even fewer than the 885 seats of Richardson Auditorium made available to us. Of those seats, 250 went to those registered for the Kennan conference. Had I been among the 600 conference registrants, I would have had a 42 percent chance of landing a seat in Richardson, a significantly larger advantage than the student lottery I participated in. Moreover, in addition to the 250 tickets reserved for the conference, a "limited number" were also available to alums who wanted to see Powell speak, according to the conference brochure.
I have to ask, just how many tickets were available for students?
Now I understand that when celebrities venture into New Jersey, it's a big deal. Everyone jumps at the opportunity of seeing a famous person on campus. In this situation the celebrity was Colin Powell, arguably one of the defining figures of our generation, so of course the desire to hear him speak was much higher. The fact still remains that Richardson has an 885-person capacity, a number that is just too small for events of this popularity. Granted Jadwin is not as glamorous and intimate as the Neo-Raphaelite Richardson, but this is not about aesthetics; this is about practicality and giving every student who wants to the opportunity to hear the speaker in person. For a basketball game alone, Jadwin has been known to seat more than 7,000 people.
When asked whether a larger venue had been considered, University spokeswoman Patricia Allen said, "The reason why Richardson Auditorium was selected as the location for Secretary Powell's lecture was due to security concerns with Jadwin."
I am sure that the most highly trained bodyguards in the history of the world, the Secret Service, are more than capable of dealing with a gymnasium in the middle of New Jersey.
Though Powell has come and gone, the real problem is for when the next big speaker comes to campus. Will the University still have to play the political appeaser to, among others: the alumni, the friends of the Princeton library, the Institute of Advanced Study, the Princeton University Council of Humanities and the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical studies, all of whom sponsored the Kennan conference. Or will students actually get an equal percentage of the benefits? As a consequence of the politics involved and the University's use of Richardson, the students are getting the short end of the stick, and I for one, find this incredibly frustrating.
So what is to be done?
Since we simply don't have a large enough auditorium, Jadwin, while a less glamorous and less intimate setting to hear a speaker, should certainly be considered as a venue for extremely high turnout events. In addition I think that the lottery system needs be revised so that if you win one, the chances of you winning the next are much lower. And so, while I realize that the University had to acknowledge and placate the various departments that helped to bring Colin Powell here, in the future, the University should not allow pandering to these various groups to cause them to lose sight of what should be the most important "special interest group" at this school: the students.
Chris Berger is a sophomore from London. His column runs every other Thursday. You can reach him at cberger@princeton.edu.
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