Editorial About our evening with the Chief Justice

Author: [no author name found]

If Tuesday's lecture by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., was truly a model for the proposed monthly convocation series, it is difficult to imagine what we would now reflect on for the next three weeks of community discussion. Roberts was eloquent, humorous and more than willing to take student questions, but he had clearly been invited to celebrate a new professorship in honor of his late predecessor, and not to deliver a lecture that would spark original thought and lively debate across campus.

Students, on the other hand, were invited under the impression that the lecture would launch a campus dialogue on some issue facing American constitutional law. Professors cancelled evening classes and students waited hours in the cold rain to attend the event. Old Chapel hyped the lecture as an important moment in the life of the College and said it could serve as a foundation for major discussions. We were, it now seems, misled.

In fact, the evening was little more than a very elegant, very extravagant announcement of a new professorship, featuring one very high-profile speaker. The lecture, through no fault of Roberts' own, fell far short of laying any real sort of foundation for lively cross-campus discussion. While we would have welcomed the Chief Justice to town if only to show him our colorful foliage and new buildings, that was not the sort of visit we were told to expect. Given the planning and fundraising necessary to create a new professorship, College administrators clearly had a specific agenda in mind while organizing and making arrangements for the lecture, but failed to honestly convey the purpose of Roberts' visit to the student body. If Old Chapel expects students to one day inconvenience themselves on a monthly basis for these major convocations, events need to be better-planned to inspire discussion, or more honestly represented to students and faculty so they can make informed choices about whether they wish to attend.

Beyond the evening's failure to launch substantive discussion, it also reflected the College's inexperience in handling such a large-scale event. Although administrators clearly anticipated a large student turnout, as was communicated through multiple e-mails and press releases, students were given no fair or organized means to gain admission. Instead, students were advised that doors would open for them at 7 p.m., and those wishing to attend should arrive early due to limited seating capacity. The result was hundreds of students lining Storr's Walk from the doors of Mead to Old Chapel road, waiting hours in the cold rain for a seat inside the Chapel. Combined with the hour-long wait for the lecture to start once the doors opened, some busy students wasted as much as four hours waiting for a 22-minute lecture. The whole dilemma could have been avoided had the College implemented a simple lottery system weeks ago for interested students to vie for seats. But instead the College showed a flagrant disrespect for students' time, not to mention the academic time lost from classes that were cancelled or exams that were rescheduled.

Finally, President Ronald D. Liebowitz's performance as the College's top representative Tuesday evening was sorely disappointing. The President's plain opening remarks were an underwhelming welcome to the hundreds of students, faculty, staff and community members who had gathered, and his introduction of the Chief Justice hardly ventured beyond the biography printed in the lecture program. Delivering what may have been the most important opening remarks of his career, Liebowitz appeared unimaginative and unprepared, reading his speech word for word from a script.

College officials should be commended for providing students with the unique opportunity to engage one of this nation's most distinguished and respected public servants. The plan to implement a convocation series is a noble one that could, properly enacted, play a leading role in the President's effort to expand human capital on campus. But given Tuesday's lecture, the only discussion question we could foresee in the coming weeks is how to make future events like Roberts' more meaningful, more organized, and more professional. Before embarking on a full series of major lectures, Old Chapel should see to it that this important discussion question is answered first.