To all those students complaining about the allocation of tickets to the Obama speech. Please, pull your head in. To contemplate for a moment that the university knows the incremental value of you compared to the other 50,000 students is ridiculous. In fact I would be more concerned if they did keep such a dossier on each student. The uni would have had little forewarning of the White House’s intention for Obama to deliver a speech at UQ. There is no pure egalitarian method of distributing these tickets to the most ‘deserving’ students; particularly given the short time frame the uni would have been given. Four days ago the QPS was unaware of Obama’s speech. The college system offers a logical, attainable ticket allocation with easy distribution channels. Alternatives could have been by faculty, sporting organisations, rural students, scholarship holders… all fraught with perceived bias and an inherent problem of actually being able to communicate with these students in a very short period of time. To think the university could prioritise a list, issue invites, coordinate RSVPs, reissue invites for non-responses etc in 4 days is absurd. Show a bit of nous and forethought that should be engrained in the thought process of UQ students. No one is entitled to attend this function, there are finite seats and clearly a huge demand. The people that have received an invite can count themselves as incredibly lucky and remember the next time the university asks for assistance, they should be the first to put of their hands. Start behaving like the students that attend such a prestigious Group of Eight university so when Obama’s well healed media and speech advisors trawl the internet for topical points, they don’t absorb the petty bickering on display here. The next dignitary wishing to deliver such a momentous speech to university students would be excused for bypassing UQ knowing the consternation their attendance would cause. Your global valuation of being a UQ graduate will be kindly boosted by Obama’s landmark visit. This is the most powerful person in the world. The first black US president. The man that ended a phoney war in Iraq. The man that signed the Affordable Care Act after a century of disagreement. The man negotiating with China to lower both countries emissions. The man that repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. We have Prof Ian Fraser. We have Geoffrey Rush. We have Peter Beatie. We have John Eales. And now we have Barack Obama. The speech will be broadcast live on ABC News 24. Grab a zooper dooper and get your friends together to watch it. Maybe head to the RE afterwards and remember where you were the day President Obama gave the Brisbane Speech and celebrate a great moment in UQs history.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 19:54:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015