Although Chancellor Andrew Martin’s inauguration ceremony occurred on Thursday, Oct. 3, that didn’t stop the Washington University community from continuing to celebrate the momentous occasion. Students took the lead on Friday, with TEDxWUSTL hosting a speaker event sharing the inauguration theme: Momentum.

“In keeping with sharing ‘ideas worth spreading,’ our speakers will share ideas with us today which may help shape our future using lessons from our past and present,” emcee junior Steven Kish said to open the program, which took place in Emerson Auditorium. “Also, come on, what a great opportunity to make ‘Momentum’ puns.”

The event featured five student speakers who each spoke for 15-20 minutes about a wide range of topics that mattered to them. Students were able to successfully touch on large, important issues while keeping the narratives of their talks personal and engaging.

This was evident right off the bat when the first speaker, senior Lexi Jackson, opened her talk on confirmation bias by discussing her experience growing up exposed to a wide array of cultures through a cultural exchange program that her grandmother helped found called Springfield Sister Cities Association, an affiliate of Sister Cities International.

“Sister Cities…bridged this desire for connection in a creative way, cultivating an untraditional childhood for myself in southern Missouri and leading me to identify the other assumptions in my life worth questioning,” Jackson said. “Assumptions that may prevent me from accessing the wealth of information and people that this world has to offer.”

Jackson continued by addressing the many forms of biases that affect people’s day-to-day mindsets and decisions. She argued that in order to challenge these predispositions, we must constantly work to make connections with those who have different experiences and perspectives than our own.

“No matter how creative we think we are, if we don’t seek out connection with other individuals who can challenge our assumptions and facilitate our creative processes, all of that work will be in vain,” Jackson said. “…So I encourage you to reflect. What are the challenges in your life that create assumptions that can prevent you from being creative and connected? Who is best equipped to help you challenge those assumptions?”

The idea of questioning biases proved to be a strong theme throughout the event, with second speaker, junior Jessika Baral calling on audience members to confront a commonly held belief: that they can’t dance.

As a dance activist and founder of St. Louis-based nonprofit Our Chance to Dance, Baral emphasized the importance of movement in self-expression and empowerment. She even got attendees on their feet in an activity meant to challenge them to embrace their bodies.

“Throughout my years of teaching dance I’ve learned that some people are frightened of their bodies,” Baral said. “They’re afraid to use it to express themselves. They’re afraid to draw attention to it.”

In addition to drawing from her own experiences with dance, Baral discussed the scientific benefits of the art form. She expressed that by learning to truly “dance like nobody’s watching,” one can become more confident in all facets of their life.

“Movement forces you to stop being sedentary in your growth. Because by literal definition, to move you have to, well, move,” she said. “You have to get up, you have to get going, you have to change, and it is through this change that you can heal.”

Dual Degree Engineering student Joe Beggs was the third speaker to take the stage, sharing many personal anecdotes in a talk driven by the strong narrative of his journey to confront “dogma,” which he described as the “collective wisdom of the many generations that came before us.”

“Think about it: most things in our lives, from common phrases to big corporations to entire fields of study have great inertia,” he continued. “They’re hard to change. Dogma forms the foundational knowledge that you build upon…People do things a certain way because that’s how they’ve always been done and that’s how they always will be done.”

Beggs talked about the many ways he’s learned to question the dogma ingrained in him, such as forging his own academic path by pursuing a dual degree from Grinnell College and Wash. U. and creating two biotech startup businesses.

“Now my mission is to build bridges as others have built them for me,” he said. “…So, no matter your position in life, persist through the uncomfortable challenges, climb the mountain that represents whatever dogma is in your life, but remember to invite others to cross the bridges that you built.”

Ruth Durrell, a senior Educational Studies and Sociology major, is no stranger to building bridges. In her talk, she asked the pertinent question: “What will you do when the civil rights movement comes to you?”

Durrell discussed her experience after former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley was found not guilty of murdering a 24-year-old Black man named Anthony Lamar Smith in 2011. While many of Durrell’s friends attended the large protests throughout St. Louis that followed the 2017 verdict, she expressed that fear prevented her from attending with them.

However, Durrell learned to channel that fear in a way that allowed her to find her place in the fight for equality and equity: education. She works to provide underserved communities with the necessary resources and support to lessen the “achievement gap,” or, as she put it, “opportunity gap” that exists between low-income people and Americans of color and white and higher socioeconomic status individuals.

“The civil rights movement is everywhere. It is all around us. It is now,” Durrell said. “….When the civil rights movement comes to you and you’re trying to decide what to do, do not let this be an, ‘I would have, I could have, I should have.’ Do not let this be a wasted moment…Know that the only bad fear is wasted fear…All I ask is that you get in where you fit in and do good.”

The closing talk by senior Kaitlyn Herndon provided powerful, analytical insight on a topic that might surprise some: horror movies. A horror-junkie herself, Herndon described the way recent films such as Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” have proven to be “reflective of 21st century worries and concerns.”

Additionally, she touched on the evolving role of women in horror films, from helpless Scream Queens to strong protagonists who attack their own problems head on. To Herndon, horror allows people to truly see inside themselves.

“For the first time in a genre in film, we’re being asked to expose the bare bones of our worries,” she said, adding that horror provides us with a platform to “work harder to understand one another’s humanity.”

By watching horror films, Herndon argued that one can learn to eradicate their fears and create a world “in which horror is just a genre, not a reality.”

The program also included three moving performances by WUSlam poets Hannah Grimes, Sabrina Spence and Jordan Coley. Attendees had the chance to discuss what they learned as well as ideas that they find “worth spreading” at the post-event reception. Students raved about the impactful talks they witnessed.

Sophomore Elizziebeth Dickerson appreciated how speakers spoke on their personal experiences and perspectives.

“Just to hear other students’ stories,” she said. “It’s less of an academic…It’s a personal thing, so I feel like that’s super important.”

Editor’s Note: Sabrina Spence and Jordan Coley are on the Student Life staff. They were not involved in the writing or editing of this article.