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Like it in the Ath More
If you’re like me, you really like it in the Ath (notwithstanding this lackluster past semester). And what’s not to like? Good(-ish) food, the company of classmates and professors, and sometimes, if you’re really careful, the nice lady behind the bar will give you wine before you turn 21. Ah, life is good.
Sometimes the Ath can have a truly big influence on your life. After chatting up Ath speakers, some students have landed summer jobs or even full-time jobs. Indeed, for many students, the Ath will be one of those most memorable experiences of their time at Claremont McKenna. Small wonder then that when the Development Office calls you — and they will — they almost always mention the Ath and the speakers that the school had brought to campus during the past semester.
So in the spirit of my Forum blog posts, please allow me to skewer and burn a sacred cow or two.
Keep out the riff raff. You know how it is. You show up and then some townie asks a really odd, really embarrassing question of the speaker and everyone grimaces. Can’t there be something we can do to at least profit off of these odd experiences? Fortunately, there is! We could actually charge these people for coming into the Athenaeum after dinner. At the very least we could do is have an Ath waiter offer around a collection plate. To some this might be seen as tacky, but isn’t that what is done when you go to concerts or the theatre? Oftentimes there’s a very small donations box in the corner where people can give what their conscience dictates.
The townies aren’t the only offenders. So please, all of you, no questions of the speaker that could be answered by skimming Wikipedia. Also avoid sycophantic questions: When a girl asked the ambassador of Syria how the U.S. could help Syria, a sponsor of terrorism, promote peace, the audience rightly laughed at her. This kind of guarantee of public humiliation would help preserve our image as intellectually serious students.
Voting on art. If we had had a discussion or voted on the art before it came to the Athenaeum, we might have prevented some of the hideous art work currently on display. Frankly, it’s disgusting and I know I hope I’m not alone in wanting a pubic hair free dining hall.
Stop subsidizing seniors. An Ath meal is free for people off the meal plan. During palmier times, we might have been able to afford this extravagant expenditure, but now it really is time to ask ourselves whether or not that money is really worth it. Can’t seniors pay some percentage of their meal? There is, after all, no such thing as a free Ath lunch.
Auctioning off head table spots. My last post I elicited some discussion of auction markets. The current cap on head tables doesn’t work. Many times this past semester, the Ath fellows upgraded some students to the head table. A better system would be to figure out a way to guarantee that the students who had at least a passing knowledge of the speaker sat at the head table.
Vote on who the Ath fellows are. At the very least, it’s time to expand the ranks of students that speak publicly on behalf of the college. One of the Ath fellows called Herodotus, “Hairy do tus.” Yeah, I know. Students have a better knowledge of who is a good speaker and who is not, who had good connections to potential speakers and who does not, than some committee.
Have students invite speakers. Having Bonnie Snortum invite speakers to the Ath almost certainly means that a prospective speaker will be upping his fee. The thinking goes like this, “If a paid representative of the college is the person who is inviting me, they must have a lot of funds earmarked for these purposes.” But if we had a committee of students calling we could at the very least feign interest or poverty. Who knows? It may even help students negotiate fees when they move into the working world.
Privatizing the extraction of the video. When Anderson Cooper or Karl Rove comes to town, we should immediately ship the video out to C-Span to get attention for our up and coming Claremont McKenna. Why don’t we already? Everything we can do to build Claremont McKenna’s brand will benefit us in the long run.
Part of the problem is that those who video tape the events put them up on a clunky and difficult to use website. A fellow student and I spent the better part of an afternoon trying to retrieve a video of Milton Friedman’s lecture to Claremont students, only to be told that it had been lost, which raises a very important question: why film it at all? Fortunately, we have an example of a successful Ath YouTube event in the Ath talks of Jonathan Rosenberg CMC ‘83. One one of those videos, he’s gotten over 57,000 views since Google put it up the videos on YouTube. And he’s just some guy from Google. Imagine if we put up some of the star-studded cast of the past. Something as simple as a Athenaeum YouTube Channel would open up access to CMCers who couldn’t make it and even attract future CMCers to apply just be sharing the talks already happening on campus.
Add in some transparency–just some. Regardless of how you feel about Bono politically (and in the spirit of full disclosure, I should note that I’m not a fan), you have to admit that that was a pretty big waste of money. Allegedly, Claremont McKenna spent $100,000 for a little over twenty minutes of Bono’s time. Maybe it’s time for some transparency on the fees that Ath speakers get, if only to ask whether or not the college’s money might be better spent elsewhere.
We all like it in the Ath, but with these reforms and others, we might just like it harder.
19 Comments
2009-06-10
17:15:40
apparently the art is tied to some sort of donation, so they're required to put it on display if they want the money. no one likes it and it is REALLY bad, but apparently its a significant amount of money.
im told they have considered listing the fees paid for speakers, but it would cause the Ath to lose any leverage in negotiations with future speakers.
i would like them to address the head-table process. i think for the most popular ath speakers (maybe the top 50%) students should have to fill out an application listing their reason for wanting to sit with the speaker and their knowledge of the subject area (do they have a personal relationship with the speaker? have they written a research paper on the subject? etc...). it should be an informal process so that all sorts of different reasons could be considered, but i think an important aspect of the application should be suggesting possible questions ahead of time. i think that this would partially address the issue of people asking dumb questions due to coming unprepared and make the head table more equitable.
2009-06-11
13:55:07
Hey Nathan,
I knew that about the money and how they have to put it on display, but maybe they could do a better job about courting different donors for the artwork or to subsidize it?
As for the stuff about leaking that information making it difficult for the Ath to negotiate fees, that may be so, but I would tend to doubt it as a lot of the speakers already have fixed rates that they advertise freely. I would reckon that the market for speakers isn't really that negotiable.
I like your idea about having students fill out some kind of application, but I wonder who would read them? And about the top 50%, how would you gage demand for a speaker that hasn't come yet? Maybe by tying it to compensation for the speaker? Still, it's a solid idea so long as certain provocative questions weren't screened. We're not Pomona, after all.
--Charles
2009-06-11
18:19:03
Dear Charles,
I’m glad to see that you are giving the Athenaeum the critique it deserves, considering that it certainly is a signature element that sets Claremont McKenna apart from other institutions, liberal arts and large research universities alike. I’d like to comment on a few of your recommendations, however.
1) Regarding keeping the riff raff out – I agree, townies can be obnoxious. The random woman who once told a speaker, a Sudanese refugee, that she was a “child of Sudan” and proceeded to lecture the guest about how everything he knew about the situation in Darfur was wrong drove me berserk at the time (maybe that was my freshman year?) and still infuriates me every time I see her. Yet Ath Fellows “give preference to students,” and they will only hand the microphone to a townie when no student offers a question. Thus the only people you can blame for townie participation are the students themselves, which then leaves us in a dilemma. If we have to encourage students to ask questions of speakers about topics they reasonably and legitimately have little to comment on in order to “block” townies from speaking, as it were, then aren’t we inevitably permitting questions that may come only from skimming Wikipedia? I recognize that some people may have questions that seem superficial, but wouldn’t deliberately avoiding them be censorship? The issue of the question-and-answer session thus places us in a bind wherein we have to decide whether to allow dialogue and participation from all students, one of the hallmark traits of the Ath, or to selectively prohibit students/faculty/townies in order to “shape” the debate.
2) The head table – this issue puzzles me too, for while I don’t want to students excluded because others overly take advantage of the privilege of the head table, I do see the flaws in the current system. I have already considered the recommendation that Nathan (above) makes regarding asking potential head table guests why they are interested in sitting with the speaker, but the authority to make a decision should lie with the Bonnie and the Ath Fellows, since part of the latter’s role is to ensure a lively head table conversation. I believe we are all pretty aware of which speakers are going to receive the greatest interest among students for head table spots, so I don’t think we need to demonstrate compensation.
3) Perhaps I am biased, but I think public voting on Ath Fellows is dangerous. Wouldn’t the opportunity just turn into another campus-wide election based on popularity? Contrast this with an application that will demonstrate one’s own actual passion for the Ath.
4) Regarding student invitations: students ARE encouraged to invite speakers, but only with the support of the Athenaeum, given the possible problems that might arise if students make promises that CMC can’t keep (financial, scheduling, what have you). Additionally, I think just receiving a request from students carries less weight than from an adult whose job is to represent the Ath, which gives the institution more credibility.
The Athenaeum is one of the main reasons I applied to CMC in the first place, and I sincerely want to make it a better institution, just as I imagine you do. This means fostering a place that showcases all types of people, ideas and opinions, while still holding true to its basic principles. That will be my goal this upcoming year.
2009-06-11
21:58:15
"Contrast this with an application that will demonstrate one’s own actual passion for the Ath."
Is passion really what we should be looking for? I could be terribly passionate about my iPhone, but that doesn't make me CEO of Apple--you know what I mean. We'd agree that competence, skill, talent, and knowledge are usually better selection criteria for any position. The worry with an application process administered by Ath staff and committee is that passion overwhelms appropriateness for the Ath (e.g. "he was okay, but, wow, he really wants it"). Someone may be only kind of into it but really good for it. Consider someone with a few other activities and responsibilities who may not have read the full history of the institution yet; instead she has developed her public speaking and social skills--the two characteristics in past years apparently anathema to our Athenaeum. An election may not gauge much, but it certainly seems to reward people who can talk well to other people--or, I guess, to use your terms, "popularity."
2009-06-11
22:21:33
Well said, Passionate. I would only add that we trust popular people with the administration of our student fees. Why shouldn't we trust popular, social people with 1) public speaking and 2) socialability?
--Charles
I'll have more comments later.
2009-06-11
21:04:12
Charles,
Interesting points, and I'm glad that you and David are having a productive, civil discussion here.
I wanted to chime in regarding compensation for speakers. Now, it's true that many speakers do charge a flat rate for speaking engagements, although a well-placed connection can reduce or eliminate that fee. That said, I would guess that only the very well-known public figures who speak at the Ath charge those kinds of fees. Even when booking well-known figures, the Ath tries to use contacts and get around "speaking agencies" that usually charge even more.
The majority of Ath speakers, though -- the academics, journalists, alumni, and professionals etc., who are less well-known, and whose talks are not as well attended -- only get paid small honoraria, if that. If you're, say, a social psychologist who will be speaking about your research on social media and group cohesion, you may be well-known in your field, but not outside of it, and you aren't going to command a high fee. Usually you will accept a speaking engagement at the Ath if you happen to be passing through Southern California, because it's a chance to share your scholarship and participate in the academic process, and because the Ath may agree to pay some of your transportation costs, give you some lodging and a meal, and perhaps a small honorarium. Many speakers also come through student and especially faculty connections. I'd guess that a large part of the Ath's budget goes towards the daily operation of the institution -- not towards speaking fees.
2009-06-12
00:17:35
Hey Charles,
You sound so savvy when you offer "free market solutions" and "transparency suggestions" by trying to improve everything with some kind of auction, election, or privatization whenever possible. Yet, you throw in those buzz words (auction head table spots, privatize video) without even explaining how the auction would work or what "privatizing the extraction of video" means. Isn't CMC a private institution already? Don't you mean outsourcing? And isn't that just hosting, not extracting? Do you know anything about business or technology?
No, seniors should not have to pay for their meals, at least not this year, as those students don't have sufficient notice that they will have to undertake up to a $2000 added burden for meals. Maybe they can do that for your year, though. Put in a request.
I have to get back to privatizing and auctioning off elections, aborting and killing babies, etcetera.
--I start all my comments with "Hey ____,"
PS I do think the video system on cmc.edu is awful, but that's not an original complaint. Try doing something about it instead of complaining.
2009-06-12
07:17:42
Hey record skipper,
I'll ignore some of the snideness of your post and address its merits.
What's wrong with trying to improve things with markets, etc.? As you no doubt know, I have limited space to write up my entire opinion. I have given a lot of thought to how each of these would work, but there isn't suffice space to walk about what kind of auction we would use. I'm partial to Vickrey auctions. As for privatizing the video, you're right about using the word 'outsource,' but given the stigma that word has been given by the Left, I don't often use it. What I meant to say is actually "subcontract" it out.
The seniors comment is really disappointing. Presumably, cuts are going to have to be made. Would you rather it was to the programming of the Ath for your final year or that you had to throw in a few extra dollars to pay for your meal? It really does just boil down to free meals and bad speakers versus slightly more expensive meals and good speakers. Money, after all, is fungible.
Finally, you may well be right about how it's not an "original complaint," and indeed, you are right as far as I'm concerned. When I asked to record Karl Rove, it was pooh poohed and so later, I bought a flip camera to record speakers anyways. But it would be nice if I could set up a real camera and record some of the speakers in real time or even live cast it.
Oh, and try being civil next time. It might do you a world of good.
2009-06-12
09:28:45
Keep out the "Riff Raff"?
Apparently the page you tore out of "The Revolution" doesn't apply to those who didn't go to college or who make less than $100K a year.
2009-06-12
15:02:07
From the real world,
Maybe you and I have a misunderstanding about what higher, elite education is all about. Remember, the Ath exists for the student body, not for your social views.
Thanks,
Charles
2009-06-29
11:07:19
You actually see no value in CMC actively attempting to have a positive impact on the surrounding community? Especially in such an unimposing manner as allowing a few members of the community to listen to someone speak. How much is that costing you? And God forbid that someone asks a question that you already knew the answer to (even though you make it so abundantly clear that you already have an answer for everything). Maybe the 20-some-year old kid (the age/gender here is obviously irrelevant) who asks a 'dumb' question is inspired by the speaker or the answer given to go to college themself and improve their livelihood so that they may have a positive impact on society.
You're right,we do have a misunderstanding, but I don't think its as much about the nature of a 'higher, elite educaiton' as it is about our worldviews. You want a world where knowledge, money, and power are concentrated in the hands of the privledged few, and I don't.
Keep sitting on your high horse, maybe someday you will join the aristrocratic ranks you fight for so valiantly. Most likely they will give you the same treatment as you advocate CMC give 'the riff-raff'.
2009-06-29
23:21:11
@still out here,
I'll refrain from walking into the weeds with the personal attacks on me. There are so many problems and assumptions with your assessments of my views that it would take more ink than I can spare to correct them.
I'm not saying that I don't see a value to the surrounding community, but that is at our dime and we have to ask ourselves about what those costs are. I suggested that we put all of talks online. I don't favor a world of privilege, money, and knowledge concentrated in a few hands. I do favor an academic experience where we ration our college's exposure to nutty people. Forgive me if that's against your world view, but I think I'll live.
As for aristocratic ranks, I reject the Marxist critique you have going on. What's wrong with aspiring to wealth? It's so 19th century, but I thank you for your compliment. And as for being treated as riff raff, you have to earn the opportunity to be treated as anything else.
2009-06-12
09:40:51
I think a YouTube solution would be good--at least for some videos. CMC could store the original video for itself, and then publish the headliners online, as long as the speakers agree, which would be the toughest part of this move, I'd say.
2009-06-12
15:19:49
Hey, YouTube Me. CMC already does have a YouTube channel. It should just either 1) get more students to use it by allowing them to upload videos 2) follow Pitzer's example and actually put stuff up. Compare the two schools' YouTube pages and you get what I'm talking about. Pitzer puts up its graduation speakers stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/pitzercollege
http://www.youtube.com/claremontmckenna
2009-06-12
10:23:33
We all know the Ath video page sucks, but I don't think it's even necessary to "outsource" or "subcontract" anything (by the way, I think privatization has a pretty similar connotation, but who cares about connotations?).
It isn't hard to set up our own "YouTube" or to set up a TED-like, Vimeo.com-like, or Youtube.com like site on CMC.edu. It might be easier to just put things on YouTube, which has tons of technicians updating the software and maintaining the servers, but I don't think it should be too hard for our full-time, paid staff to set up something on our own server so we can own and control it. Or we can outsource the server space and bandwidth (AWS, for example) but still have it tied into our own website. The cheapest solution would be to put it on one of those sites, but I don't think that would be as cool as doing it ourselves. CMCtube?
2009-06-12
12:40:12
I like this idea of CMCtube, but who's gonna do it? Charles will probably just write 3-4 more articles on the matter for the Forum, they'll get 15-20 comments (excitement!), and then the ideas will fade. Charles, why don't you take the initiative here and create a new system for Ath? This is CMC, a small enough college where I bet a student run CMCtube could really take off. I'd suggest you ask Josh for help, but I'd bet an Ath head table spot you'd scoff at working with him.
2009-06-12
13:43:00
Hey Alex, a.k.a., Just do it,
I've already spoken with Bonnie Snortum about changing this policy since freshman year. She's given me the run around. Now if you want to help me (and anyone else) in changing the policy, I'd be more than happy. Also, I think CMC should have a YouTube channel, not do its own thing. I don't think it's worthwhile to hire on more people, especially at a time of recession.
2009-06-16
11:41:22
whoa there, you CANNOT get rid of free ath dinners for seniors. do you know how poor seniors get by their fourth year at cmc?! besides, only 2% actually take advantage of it consistently. the reality is truer than some of your ideas: the apartments are too far away from the Ath for people to take advantage of the savings.
ps I heard you're still in KC this summer. Let me know if you ever want bbq! Seriously...
2009-07-17
09:34:17
Does anyone else find the title of this article hilarious?