On Tuesday, Sept. 30th, thirteen students gathered in Crossroads Cafe to compete in the TEDxMiddlebury Student Speaker Competition, in which participants delivered four-minute pitches to a panel of judges on an idea they wanted to further explore and share through a full TED talk. Rachel Liddell ’15 was the winner of the competition and will therefore be this year’s student speaker at the fifth annual TEDxMiddlebury Conference, which is currently set to be held on Sunday, Nov. 9th with the theme, “Living in the Question.”
Liddell’s pitch was titled “Sex, Power, and Politics: How and Why We Sexualize Powerful Women.”
She said, “I’m hoping students will gain a little insight into our own community at a micro level. At a macro level, I hope we all start thinking about how we act as voters and judgers of the people around us, and how we include the sexuality of women in our perception of women’s skill in a variety of areas including politics, art, history, anything.”
Liddell’s topic was inspired by her experiences running for and serving as the President of the Student Government Association (SGA).
“The way I felt perceived by my community was not always positive,” said Liddell. “Specifically, during my campaign, someone defaced one of my posters to make it sexually explicit. This experience was incredibly hurtful at the time, but over time, I’ve recognized it as part of a pattern in society at large. Discussing how powerful women are sexualized will address this pattern, and hopefully disrupt it.”
Founded in 1984, TED is a nonprofit devoted to the sharing of ideas in the form of talks lasting no longer than eighteen minutes.
“The TEDx program is a branch of TED that supports communities around the world to host their own TED-like events,” said Josh Swartz ’14.5, one of the chief organizers and board members for TEDxMiddlebury.
TEDxMiddlebury was founded under the Programs for Creativity and Innovation (PCI) and held its inaugural conference in 2009 for an audience of approximately one-hundred people. Since then, the conference has expanded to host 400 people in the Middlebury Center for the Arts (MCA) Concert Hall.
Notable guest speakers from past conferences include spoken word artist Big Poppa E from HBO’s “Def Poetry” series and Emmy Award winning director of NBC News Washington Jeffrey Blount.
“[The conference] has grown quite a bit,” said Swartz. “We professionally record all our talks and upload them to our YouTube channel. Our most popular talk from last year was queer and trans activist Alok Vaid-Menon’s, whose talk ‘We are nothing (and that is beautiful)’ was an editor’s pick on the TED website just this month and has been watched over 80,000 times.”
“This year, for the first time actually, the Middlebury Oratory Society partnered with TEDx and hosted a prep session [for participants] before the Student Speaker Competition,” said Swartz. This session was held on Monday, Sept. 29th.
Among the many changes over the years for TEDxMiddlebury was the inclusion of the student speaker. Ryan Kim ’14 spoke in the 2012 conference, and Alec Macmillan ’14 spoke in the 2013 conference.
“Having a student speaker has helped us further engage the student body,” said Swartz. “This is always an ongoing goal for TEDxMiddlebury.”
Ryan Kim ’14 and Alec Macmillan ’14 were the first student speakers for TEDxMiddlebury. Kim spoke in the 2012 conference, and Macmillan in the 2013 conference.
Swartz stated that between twelve and sixteen students deliver pitches in the Student Speaker Competition each year.
“Anyone can pitch. They have four minutes, and we try to limit their use of visual aids and multimedia, so the judges can focus on the presence of the person and their idea, which will ultimately become the foundation for a longer eighteen-minute talk” said Swartz.
With Liddell set to be this year’s speaker, Swartz and the other organizers for TEDxMiddlebury will focus their efforts exclusively on the November 9th conference.
Swartz said, “It’s motivating to be part of a team that works so actively to make each event better than the last — to work towards building something that is both inspiring for the student body and that represents and values many different identities, experiences, and ideas.”
Meanwhile, Liddell will be working with MiddCORE Instructor in Persuasive Communication Mike Kiernan to develop her winning pitch into a full eighteen-minute TED talk for the conference.
“I am so excited and honored to have the opportunity to speak at TEDxMiddlebury,” said Liddell. “Hopefully, I’ll influence the way people think, and I definitely plan on having fun. I am very grateful to talk about an issue for which I care deeply.”
