Forum offers formal setting for students to discuss papers

Pat Kabat ’06 wrote a paper his freshman year about the movie “Fight Club” and how it reflected the works of Nietzsche, Joseph Conrad, and others.

The paper for Professor Robert McVaugh’s “The Challenge of Modernity” class was a textual exploration of the 1999 movie, which stars Brad Pitt.

Kabat said he feels there are scenes in the movie that are “explicit rehearsals of dogmatic Nietzschean perspectives on conscience and guilt. And it goes through Conrad’s indictment of the human soul, with certain frames that seem to be exact replications from Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness.’”

He had a lot of fun writing the paper and talked about it with his friends. But once he turned in his paper to McVaugh, he was at a loss. It was an important part of his course work, but Kabat felt that his paper “just died.” He said he talked to other students who had similar feelings.

The sophomore wanted more, a chance for himself and fellow students to share the ideas and motivations behind their papers in a venue that would inspire discussion among peers and professors.

And so, with encouragement from McVaugh and Dean of the College Adam Weinberg, the Student Lecture Forum was born. The first event was held Sunday, April 4, at the Colgate Inn.

“I wanted to create a way that students could present their ideas to the community and they could be engaged beyond the deadline of the paper,” said Kabat. “Colgate students will go to lectures, and that’s great, but we have ideas, too, and they need to come out.”

Kabat sent professors a letter asking them which student papers stood out and deserved recognition. Students also were invited to submit papers. Over this past winter break, Kabat looked at about 30 “amazing” papers and then discussed them with other members of a review committee when he returned to campus. The other committee members were Weinberg, McVaugh, Ben Opipari, director of the Writing Center, and Jill Tiefenthaler, associate dean of the faculty.

“Every single paper deserved a lecture. They were all incredible,” said Kabat. After more discussion, the list was whittled down to 12 semifinalists, and out of those, three students were selected to present formal presentations at the Colgate Inn dinner.

“It was really wonderful to see so many faculty and so many students having dinner together on a Sunday night, just talking about important public issues, talking about their classes, talking about social policy, and sharing a meal and intellectual conversation,” said Weinberg.

It also provided the students a solid lesson in public speaking and a good demonstration of how important it is to be able to speak and write clearly and concisely.

“It was a real challenge for them to take a 30-page paper and boil it down to a 10-minute presentation. With our residential education plan, we talk a lot about working on important life skills, and one of those certainly is public speaking, learning to talk succinctly,” he added.

Kabat said he was thrilled with the dinner and the presentations.

“The event itself was everything we could hope for. It did exactly what it was supposed to do, all of the sudden these ideas were reborn after having died in deadlines when the papers were turned in.”

The papers selected for presentations were: “Legitimizing Feminist Performance Art” by Sarah Compter ’04; “A Misled Attempt to Mitigate Poverty” by Stephanie Davis ’04; and “Size as a Factor in the Development of the Deer Tick” by Matthew Kroll ‘07.

Colgate President Rebecca Chopp, who attended the dinner, said the quality of the presentations “was excellent and the questions to the presenters were insightful.”

Kabat, who is a history and political science major, said there will be another forum next semester, and he’s looking to establish it as a Colgate institution, with increased input from fellow students.

That is sweet music to Weinberg’s ears.

“We want to encourage students to take the initiative, to be entrepreneurial, to push the boundaries of campus a little bit. It’s the very best of what we’ve historically done and will hopefully continue to do,’ said Weinberg.