Text Box: Speakers Forum is a student-run group that that has been bringing entertaining and informative speakers to Clark University for over 25 years.  Although the goal of the Speakers Forum has remained the same throughout the history of the group, group, there have been many changes in how the organization operates. The 2004-2005 school year was the last year in which Speakers Forum spent its entire budget on bringing one big-name speaker, Former US Administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer, to campus at the end of the year. Up to that year, Speakers Forum existed mainly to organize that one speaking event at the end of the year and try to get as many people to attend that one event. After protests at the event and much student outrage, Speakers Forum had had its budget slashed at the annual Student Council budget meeting. The next year, in an effort to stretch a smaller budget and serve more students at the same time, Speakers Forum decided to pursue a strategy of bringing many smaller speakers to Clark that would present a wide variety of opinions to students. The first of these events was a lecture by Keith Stroup, the founder a national marijuana law reform group. Stroup attracted over 100 students for a very small fee.  However, Speakers Forum was still able to bring a big-name speaker, Political Pundit Paul Begala, to Clark that that year. The next year, Speakers Forum started off the year by bring bringing a big-name speaker to Clark (Mike Henry, producer and writer of the TV show Family Guy) in collaboration with the newly created Campus Programming Board.  Speakers Forum also brought a prominent anti-affirmative action activist and a schizophrenia expert to campus that that fall. However, however, due to several bad dealings with agents and budgetary issues with Student Council, Speakers Forum was bankrupt by the beginning of the Spring 2007 semester. However, Speakers Forum stuck with its goal of bringing entertaining and informative speakers to Clark. After being granted a special budget allocation by Student Council and acquiring several grants from academic departments as well as the Democrats of Clark University, the Speakers Forum was able to bring seven more speakers to campus that semester. That spring, the group was also able to create a new tradition in SpeakWeek, a week where a speaker comes to lecture at Clark every night of the week. Although SpeakWeek was only 3 days long that year, Speakers Forum hopes to expand the event to be a full week long. The group also hopes to increase its collaboration with other student groups in this upcoming year. Finally, Speakers Forum intends to increase its variety of speakers this year with new topics such as nuclear power, civil liberties, affirmative action, industrial hemp, UFOs, media bias, immigration reform, gun control,  and many more.

Clark University Speakers Forum

 

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