That time my student group got blocked from booking a certain speaker

Back in spring 2022 at my university in Michigan, our student club tried to bring in a journalist who had criticized both sides of the political aisle. The administration suddenly said we needed 5 liability insurance forms and a panel of 3 faculty to approve the event. After 8 weeks of back and forth, they just said 'no' without a clear reason. Has anyone else had their school quietly kill a speaker invite with paperwork instead of saying it out loud?

2 comments

2 Comments

emerycarr23d ago

Man, that admin paperwork shuffle is a classic move. I once tried to get a pretty mild-mannered local historian to speak at our college club and suddenly we needed three different signatures, a fire marshal inspection report, and a sworn affidavit that no one would throw a pie at him. I spent so long chasing down liability forms I almost forgot what the original event was even about. At the end of the day, I just shrugged and picked a different speaker who didn't require a full background check on their cat.

alices1623d ago

Honestly, the trick I've learned is to ask the admin person directly what the actual roadblock is instead of just chasing paperwork. Half the time it's some obscure policy from 2009 that nobody remembers enforcing, and they'll just let it slide if you sound polite and confused enough. Tbh, a quick call to the right office usually gets you further than ten emails to a general inbox that nobody reads. Ngl, your pie affidavit story is gold though, that's definitely going into my mental folder of "reasons to keep event planning simple.