In response to the success of past collaborations, the Stanford Speakers Bureau intends to co-sponsor more speakers this year.
The Speakers Bureau received $175,162 in Joint Special Fees last spring and has activated an additional $25,300 from its reserves for use this year. Its official Special Fees application sets aside $24,000 for co-sponsorships.
About 1,400 individuals attended the bureau’s Nov. 10 co-sponsorship with Stanford In Government (SIG) and the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) of a talk by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.
“Past collaborations worked really well,” said Speakers Bureau Co-Director Rahul Sastry ’12. “I think collaboration is a good way to make sure that more voices are heard in deciding who comes to speak here and increasing the number of people who hear about these events and are therefore motivated to come out and watch them.”
Sastry also mentioned a lack of awareness about the bureau’s ability to co-sponsor speaking events. While it usually only allocates a maximum of $1,000 dollars per speaker event and a maximum of $1,500 per year for a co-sponsorship with a particular campus organization, Sastry said it sometimes exceeds that limit to co-sponsor a marquee event such as the Annan talk.
“Last year, we had a lot more people applying spring quarter relative to fall and winter. I think that might [have] to do with the fact the word didn’t get out,” he said.
Stanford in Government Chair Otis Reid ’12 called the Annan event a success. He said Annan was SIG’s most important speaker since Pervez Musharraf spoke at Stanford in Jan. 2009 shortly after being deposed from the presidency in Pakistan.
Both Reid and Sastry said they were pleased with the collaboration. They are currently planning to bring Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to Stanford in January.
Sastry said the Speakers Bureau’s goal is to hold two to three major events per quarter. In addition to co-sponsoring Annan’s visit to campus, the bureau also independently funded documentary filmmaker Michael Moore’s October lecture, which attracted about 400 attendees.
The bureau does not fund all speakers who come to campus. For example, Stanford Students for Queer Liberation did not interact with the Bureau when bringing speakers to campus for its Intersections Week.
Last year, the bureau collaborated with SIG, Students for a Sustainable Stanford (SSS) and the Hillel Foundation for Jewish Campus Life to bring New York Times columnist and Middle East expert Thomas Friedman to campus. It also co-sponsored the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture, which brought CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and David Bohrman to campus.
“Members of SIG leadership, including myself, noted the importance of partnering with an environmental organization on campus, since Friedman would be talking significantly about his vision of a clean-energy economy,” said Siddhartha Oza ’11, last year’s SSS Co-President and SIG Vice Chair. “The partnership between SIG, SSS, Hillel and the ASSU Speakers Bureau was beneficial for all parties and ran rather smoothly.”
Last year’s ASSU Elections Commissioner Stephen Trusheim ’13 said that because the Bureau is considered an ASSU “service organization,” it has “more regulations and restrictions than a normal student organization.”
Article IX, Section 5 of the ASSU Joint Bylaws details the bureau’s organizational structure and spending, fundraising and budgeting rules. Section 5 also spells out the organization’s charge: “to promote intellectual, political, social and cultural awareness of differing viewpoints in the Stanford community.”
“On controversial issues, every attempt shall be made to provide a balanced presentation of speakers to the community, although this balance need not be present in each individual event,” Section 5 continues. The Bureau is invested with the “sole authority to invite, on behalf of the entire Association, individuals to speak at Stanford.”