Speaker choice good, but system needs more fixes

By Staff Editorial     12/4/08 6:00pm

How is it that Stuyvesant High School can book This American Life radio show host Ira Glass for its commencement and Rice University cannot? We have a few ideas about this.Today, the Commencement Speaker Committee announced that the speaker for the 2009 Commencement will be Zainab Salbi, the founder and CEO of Women for Women International, an organization that helps female survivors of war to rebuild their lives through providing them financial assistance and education (see story, page 1). Though Salbi's father served as Saddam Hussein's personal pilot, Salbi herself is not associated with Hussein, as is evident from her body of humanitarian work.

As a candidate for commencement speaker, Salbi is a good choice. We are sure her credentials will make her a great speaker and that her heartfelt service is something Rice graduates can surely learn much from.

But we have to point out the truth, and sometimes the truth hurts. How many people have heard of Salbi, and how many have heard of Ira Glass? For the past few years, Rice has been moving in the direction of achieving greater name recognition. If Rice wants to be a well-known, top-tier university, it should book well-known, top-tier speakers.

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And Rice has a tendency to choose commencement speakers who are less well known-sometimes these speakers are our own alumni. A year ago, discontent brewed when students realized that the Commencement Speaker Committee began assembling late in the fall semester and had former Rice President George Rupp mere weeks before the event ("Former Rice President Rupp chosen for Commencement, " Mar. 21). Realizing that this was unacceptable, this year's Commencement Speaker Committee assembled in April and booked the speaker a good six months beforehand.

And while this year's effort was an improvement over the fiasco of last year, we think the committee can do more to book speakers that are better known. The way we can achieve this is by forming Commencement Speaker Committees earlier - not just a few months earlier, but two years earlier. In order to book someone on the level of celebrity status, a few months is just not enough time. If this committee were formed during the sophomore year of a class-that is, two years before they graduate-there would be enough time for these committees to find qualified and available speakers to speak at commencement.

Again, it's not that Salbi is a bad choice; she is a good choice, and an improvement over last year's hastily picked speaker (Rupp graciously accepted the position last minute, and frankly, we should have been thankful anybody spoke at all). Choosing Salbi shows that the Commencement Speaker Committee has made great changes in their selection process in that the speaker was chosen a good half-year in advance and that the speaker is not from the Rice community. We just want to point out that we can - and should - always be looking for ways to improve.

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