Joel and Ethan Coen, of Coen Brothers fame. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
Did you know that Joel Coen, of the Coen brothers, is giving a talk at Conn?! No, you didn’t know that, because he’s not coming. Sorry. I hope that wasn’t too painful, but I know how it feels. Unfortunately, my version of the experience was much more drawn out.
Listening to idle pre-class chit-chat a few days ago, I heard a girl behind me talking about a lecture on campus by “some film maker with the last name Coen.” I spun around.
“You mean Joel Coen? Or Ethan Coen?!”
“Yeah, Joel, I think that’s his name.” My professor started lecturing before I had time to ask any follow up questions. I was awestruck. It couldn’t be true. No, literally, it could not be true. There would have been five thousand College Relations emails about it if that were the case. But I remained hopeful; maybe it was true. I remained in a state of hopeful denial until I saw a poster for the event just outside the classroom. It was for a lecture by filmmaker named John Cohen. I’m pretty sure my groan was audible. No offense to John Cohen—a celebrated, accomplished filmmaker in his own right (he has his own Wikipedia page, if that means anything)—but I wish for my sake that his name sounded less like that of my movie-making idols.
Why couldn’t it have been Joel Coen? Really, why couldn’t it? Probably because he’s busy on a movie set or something, but let’s use our lack of Joel Coen as a symbol for the lack of any really notable visitors to Conn over the past year or so. For the last few months I’ve heard about numerous talks, presentations and lectures, but I haven’t once recognized the names of any of the speakers, and many of them are Conn professors. In no way do I mean to belittle these events; I’ve gone to a number of them and they were all fascinating. However, I can’t help but wonder why we don’t ever get anyone with a bigger name.
It’s not like famous people never visit colleges in the Northeast. Tom Hanks is going to Yale to give a speech in a couple months, and just last year they had Bill Clinton. But Yale is Yale, you might say, we’re just a little NESCAC school. Well, with a brief glance at the websites of some of our fellow “Little Ivies,” I saw that former New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine is going to speak at Amherst next week. Tufts recently hosted both Nancy Pelosi and Katie Couric over the course of three days. Looking for an example closer to home? Just last October Wesleyan was visited by the most famous Holocaust survivor alive, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. We have a department chair named after him. Would it have been that hard to get him to drive just a half-hour down the road to our campus? And what about Barack Obama? He’ll be a literal stone’s throw away at the Coast Guard Academy next month. Couldn’t Conn get him to just take a drive around campus and wave out the window?
New England has been speckled with famous folk visiting college campuses all year round, but none of them has come to Conn. It hasn’t always been like this. We’ve had famous speakers too—really famous ones. In the year of 1996 alone, we were graced by the likes of Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison and Hillary Clinton (who, by the way, was the first lady at the time). And we didn’t have just one good year.
Over the course of our existence we’ve had talks from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, historians and poets, speeches from Nobel Laureates of chemistry, literature and peace. Actress/activist Mia Farrow spoke in Palmer Auditorium in 2000, and Robert Frost read his poems on the green in 1959. We even had a visit from Amelia Earhart way back when.
But that aforementioned year of 1996 seemed not only to be the peak of notable visitors, but the end of them. It’s like all of our connections dried up, or the school ran out of funds for booking speakers. Sure, we’ve had a few impressive names in the last decade (Cokie Roberts, Joyce Carol Oates, Mandy Patinkin) but they’re few and far between. And this year has seemed especially devoid. This year, our centennial year, a year I think the college would want to be memorable.
You might have realized from the dozens of emails about it, or maybe you figured it out after the chapel bell rang one hundred times in a row, but you wouldn’t know it from the speakers we’ve had. Lee Eisenberg and Jonathan McBride were both great, and I understand that we’re targeting alumni, but I would be shocked to hear if anyone was excited to see those speakers after just hearing their names alone. I’m not asking for an A-list stunner week after week, but wouldn’t our centennial be just that much more special if we had a famous face or two on campus?
I guess it’s a hard question to ask. I really have no idea what the process of attracting famous speakers is like, or even who at the school is responsible. Maybe it’s hard to attract renowned lecturers to such a small school, or maybe it’s a money issue. If that’s the case, I really think funds should be allocated toward such a purpose.
I think that having notable speakers is more valuable than most of the events the school spends money on. In some ways, I even think that they can be more important than new facilities. I always feel that sharp pang in my stomach when I hear about friends at other colleges getting to hear speeches from Amy Poehler or the Dalai Lama or Noam Chomsky. And it’s not just because they get the bragging rights (although I’m sure that’s part of it). It’s because being visited by important people makes you feel special, and hearing talks from the successful can often give legitimacy to this arduous four-year process called college. I know Joel Coen won’t be coming to Conn any time soon, but if our list of notable speakers seems so short during our centennial year, then what do we have to look forward to in the years to come? •
Steve Croft, of CBS News and 60 Minutes fame, came my freshmen year to talk (Though it seemed like he wasn’t a great student while at Conn and decided to become a great journalist after college). In addition, I think the Lee Eisenberg thing was done for the centennial.
Finally, almost all of those schools seems to have more well-known alumni or connections to programs those speakers were involved with.
I do agree, but just playing devil’s advocate, Sam :P