Spent $300 on a campus event speaker fee and it basically funded a shouting match

Our student group brought in a professor from another school to talk about media bias. We thought it would be a balanced discussion. The fee was $300, which we pulled from our activity budget. The event just turned into people yelling over each other for an hour. The speaker couldn't even finish a sentence. Now our budget is short and I feel like we just paid for a therapy session for the angriest people on campus. Does anyone have a better system for vetting speakers or setting ground rules that actually work?

3 comments

3 Comments

ivanbell1d ago

My friend's club had a similar mess with a debate night. They started making people write questions on notecards first, which cut down on the yelling a lot.

susan_adams1d ago

Wait, they had to make grown adults write questions down on cards to stop them from yelling? What kind of debate night were they running, a preschool snack time? I've seen people get heated over sports at my bar, but never over a structured debate. Did someone try to throw a chair or something?

pat_stone1d ago

Our local library debate on property taxes got so loud they switched to notecards after ten minutes. The moderator said it was either that or he was calling the cops for a noise complaint.