Every year, Student Union puts aside an inordinate amount of money to give students the opportunity to hear from a wide range of speakers on a number of topics—from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights to feminism to global health. We’re lucky to go to a university that can afford to bring so many influential figures to campus, but we must remember that, at its core, this series is supposed to appeal to students.

When the time rolls around each year for SU Treasury to allocate this funding, it seems that it heavily weighs that philosophy of appealing to students with the price of each proposed speaker.

Last year, while Student Union funded eight SU Speaker Series events—totaling $206,221.48— three speakers ended up canceling. This meant that $106,134.48 worth of speakers—only $18,865.52 shy of this year’s entire budget—never showed. Clearly, these cancellations are a problem—what good is having a speaker series if the speakers never make it to campus?

Thankfully, SU also noticed this problem. This year, the Speaker Series has been branded as “Trending Topics,” and SU will take control of the speaker planning process in order to, among other reasons, minimize cancellations. Also, the funds were allocated this month rather than in September, as they have in the past.  

We commend SU’s recognition of this problem in its process. Treasury even voted to order those who weren’t funded into a waitlist this year that it can consult should it need to replace a speaker.

However, Treasury’s allocation process is still flawed. Treasury is mainly concerned with bringing a wide array of many speakers and speakers students will be interested in, but it fails on both fronts.

This year, eight events were again allocated funding. The prices of each range from $800 to $35,000 and the average cost is around $15,500. However, not one person on that list has any real, universal name recognition. Sure, a quick Google search might help you recognize their significance, but the name recognition simply isn’t there.

It begs the question of whether it is more important to bring in fewer, more recognizable speakers at higher price points—that more students would theoretically be interested in—or more, cheaper, less well-known speakers that would lead to more events, but less organic interest.

We see problems with either approach. If Treasury were to only worry about name recognition, it would potentially silence narratives that may come in the form of a speaker at a lower price point, in hopes to accommodate the most people. Bringing in fewer speakers would also lead to a lack of diversity of gender, sex and race representation.

On the other hand, the speaker series is for students. It loses value and purpose if students don’t show up—and that happens if they don’t care who the speakers are or if the event isn’t marketed to make them care. Attracting students outside of a certain demographic (that demographic generally being the student group that appealed for the speaker) is objectively harder if name recognition is not a tool they can rely on.

Our solution is to reframe the entire process to look more like a series. Treasury needs to care more about how all these speakers work in conjunction with each other and their greater goals, rather than how each specific speaker fulfills both these goals.

How? Split the potential speakers into two categories: those above a certain price point—say, $50,000—and those below. Treasury should then vote to bring one speaker from the former category and a few from the latter to campus.

This year, those who were at price points above $50,000 included names like George Takei, Margaret Cho and Brandon Stanton. All of these options maintained the name recognition Treasury is looking for, however, no speaker over $35,000 was funded.

Say Treasury brought in one of these $50,000 speakers. First, it would accomplish its goal in bringing a high-profile speaker whose name alone would attract all kinds of students. But, it would still have $75,000 to allocate to other speakers. Now, with one central speaker, it can then frame a series around them, using other speakers to complement the main speaker. These speakers would provide the unique perspectives that student groups who are appealing for them are looking to bring, and SU wouldn’t be handicapping its ability to still bring a strong, diverse slate of speakers.

This way, by framing Trending Topics as the series it’s intended to look like, SU will be able to both fund speakers will appeal to a wide range of students while still providing a number of speakers with diversity and specific narratives—achieving the goal it set out to accomplish.