Forum at the Forum: What is the value of your voice at UR?

Providing opportunities for students to speak freely and think on their feet is an obligation that Linda Hobgood, director of the Speech Center, said she took seriously.

On Tuesday, April 9, the seventh annual Forum at the Forum will take place on the University Forum in front of Gottwald Science Center from 12:30 to 2 p.m. This open forum, sponsored by the Speech Center, is a revitalization of professor debates that occurred in the 1970s, Hobgood said. This year's topic is: "What is the value of your voice at UR?"

Seniors Caroline Moles and Sarah Muse are both speech consultants and worked with Hobgood to plan the forum. They will act as mediators on Tuesday, Moles said.

"I think a lot has happened this year that students haven't had the chance to talk about," she said. "We weren't trying to direct the discussion, but we were trying to leave the question for the discussion open enough that perhaps it will go in that direction."

Fifty chairs for the audience will be set-up in the Forum, facing a table of panelists, Muse said. This year's confirmed panelists are journalism professor Robert Hodierne, political science professor Rick Mayes, incumbent WCGA president Mimi Mudd, incumbent RCSGA president Patrick Love and former soccer player Scott Himelein, Moles said.

The panelists will be at the forum to introduce the subject matter as they understand it, Hobgood said. They will launch the questions and respond to any questions directed at them, she said.

It's really a chance for give-and-take, Hobgood said. She hopes that the panelists come away as enlightened as the students who attend, she said.

Although Hobgood said she would have liked to be at Richmond in the '70s when professors were debating hot topics and students would assemble and take sides, she thought the modern Forum at the Forum had some major advantages.

The forum hinges on participation, Hobgood said. She expects that staff and administrators will be generous with their time and comments because "that's who they are," but Hobgood said she did not expect that they would be so willing to come year after year, even when they have been targets of criticism.

For this year's topic, the forum organizers did not have any one expert panelist in mind to speak about the topic, Hobgood said. In past years, when the forum topic has been about housing or police issues they would bring in people from the housing office or police department to be able to speak to the specific issue, Hobgood said.

Because this year's topic can pertain to so many areas, people from many areas could have relevant backgrounds. It would be important to have someone with a rich background in at least the recent history of Richmond so he or she might speak about times that action has directly resulted from student requests, she said.

Many times within universities, students will ask for something but it won't be until years after they've graduated that the idea finally comes to fruition, Hobgood said. Someone with longevity at Richmond and who knows the history of the school could speak about what changes originated with students, she said.

Muse said that the Speech Center had decided to hold the event in the Forum so that people who were walking through could stop and join.

The organizers' main goals are participation and a high turnout, she said.

Every year, several topics are proposed by the Speech Center team and appear in The Collegian as ballot options for students to fill out and submit to ballot boxes around campus, Muse said.

Moles said she and the other organizers wanted to talk about the main idea of student presence on campus, student input and whether students matter, but when asked about their views on these topics she said that they were hesitant to say anything about their opinions because the mediators didn't want to direct the conversation.

"We want everyone that comes to ask questions to be able to feel comfortable asking the questions and not already put into some category," Moles said.

The open-ended nature of this year's question has Hobgood excited, she said, because people might answer in many ways. This will cause those attending to consider more fully how the question is worded, she said.

Past participants have included students, visitors, community members and tour participants, Hobgood said.

Contact staff writer Kylie McKenna at kylie.mckenna@richmond.edu