Student Union confirmed this year’s official speaker list for the Trending Topics Speaker Series, taking an unprecedented number of proposed speakers off the waitlist.

Environmental activist Majora Carter, nominated by the Student Environmental Council (SEC), will speak Nov. 20. Next semester’s speakers are former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, nominated by Ashoka, speaking Jan. 22; former Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza, nominated by Aperture, speaking Feb. 19; and two-time Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman, nominated by Leaders in Interpersonal Violence Education (LIVE), speaking April 1.

Graphic by Christine Watridge | Student Life

The series began with New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, who was nominated by Washington University Political Review (WUPR) and spoke at Graham Chapel on Sept. 4.
While SU signed contracts with two of the five speakers selected by Treasury in April, the remaining three members of the original, all-female ballot declined their contract offers. Former Georgia gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams and singer-songwriter Janelle Monae declined due to lack of availability, while former Planned Parenthood president and CEO Leana Wen declined because she stepped down from the position in July. As a result of these complications, SU consulted the waitlist, according to SU VP of Programming junior Charlotte Pohl.

“[Those declines] left us with a decent amount of extra money, which is something that hasn’t really happened in the past,” Pohl said. “So we’re putting that into a separate account for speaker appeals. Student groups appeal to Treasury for a speaker; that money would come directly out of that account.”

A total of $192,500 will be spent on the Trending Topics program this year, which has a budget of $225,000. Other waitlisted speakers who declined contract offers include actress Sandra Oh and President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) David Miliband.
“We got to a point where there were no speakers left who were nominated who were either within the price range or available, so that was the solution that we came up with, because this was kind of unprecedented,” Pohl said.

Although the majority of speakers selected by Treasury are unable to come to campus, speaker of the Treasury senior Agneesh Dasgupta is excited for the upcoming speaker events.

“I’m really excited to see that we were able to go through the waitlist…and see some speakers that we thought were not going to come to campus,” Dasgupta said.

SEC President senior Dugan Marieb noted how Carter’s work embodies SEC’s focus on environmental justice. Carter is an urban revitalization strategist who has dedicated her career to advocating for environmental justice in underserved communities, founding organizations such as Sustainable South Bronx and Green for All.

“I think it’s sometimes hard for people to see how communities who don’t have power can kind of fight against institutions that keep them locked in either environmentally bad situations or do not have access to things like public parks and other environmental goods,” Marieb said. “So I’m hoping she can kind of illuminate that to us and hopefully to the general St. Louis community, because we need that message right now.”

Ashoka co-president senior Rithvik Kondai is looking forward to the opportunity for Bharara to provide “representation of South Asians in non-STEM fields.”

“I feel like South Asia in general just gets more associated with STEM, and I think it’s another way of showing that there are other avenues for South Asians to be represented,” Kondai said. “And I feel like he encapsulates a lot of those things.”

As Chief Official White House Photographer during the Obama Administration, Souza has become known nationwide for his engaging photographs of all aspects of the former president’s life while in office.

“He played a huge role in Obama’s life even before he was president too,” Aperture co-president junior Jess Pine said. “And he just really documented what life was like as a president. He has a bunch of silly photos of Obama too…It just really gives you a different perspective on presidents and how human they can be, I just think we all thought it was important to show that through photography especially. A picture’s worth a thousand words.”

In addition to being a two-time Olympic gold medalist, Raisman, the last speaker in the series, is an outspoken advocate for sexual assault awareness, speaking publicly about her own experience with sexual abuse. Raisman testified against former USA Gymnastics national team doctor Larry Nassar after he was charged with 22 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with minors.

“We thought she’d be really able to speak to the community about issues surrounding sexual violence in a way that would bring people in and connect with people in a really great way,” co- chair of LIVE Sport senior AJ Dunham said. “It’s not going to be a lighthearted event, but I think it’s going to be something that people come away from really happy to have heard what she had to say.”