Overwhelmed With Opportunities

Illustration by Ramsey Scott

Sometimes, just like Augustus Gloop from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I feel as though I’ve jumped into a river made of chocolate, and I’m about to drown. I walk down the halls of Fayerweather and up the steps of Hamilton, bombarded by fliers advertising programs that I find genuinely interesting. This would be, could be, and should be great—if only I weren’t such a selfish little kid trying to gobble up as much chocolate as I could get my hands on.

Last week I planned an event in which Gal Lousky, the founder of Israeli Flying Aid, came to Columbia to talk about her organization’s humanitarian aid efforts around the world. The plans increased in scope as I coordinated with different people and groups in the weeks before her arrival on campus. A joint sponsorship was formed between four completely different campus associations, because each recognized a good speaker when they saw one. On the Facebook event, more people responded “attending” than I thought would fit in the room we had reserved.

The day arrived and the room was readied. I greeted Lousky, set the chairs straight, and waited for the crowds. The clock ticked, minutes passed... and in the end, 10 people walked through the door.

Regardless, Lousky spoke with emotion as she described the sight of Indonesian orphans gathered around a table, eating and laughing in the humanitarian aid camp which she and a team of Israeli volunteers established after Indonesia was hit by a massive earthquake. She talked about New Orleans after Katrina, and the swastikas and slurs she found scrawled on her truck every morning despite her team’s clearly selfless efforts to help all victims indiscriminately.

When she finished, the room was speechless, clearly moved by her words. The only thing that people could say was how much of a shame it was that more people didn’t come to hear her speak. Very few people at Columbia knew who she was before she came, and very few people know now. And she’s only one example of the many speakers and events that slip through our hands every day—because they’re a dime a dozen.

On one hand, this is why I came here. When I chose Columbia, my father said to me in a very clichéd moment, “How lucky for you, that you will go to school in the center of the universe!” We Columbians have the luxury of choosing from a myriad of events that draw our interest.

But the flip side is just that—we have to choose. In smaller, less central schools, it seems logical and obvious that if any captivating speaker comes to campus, the students who displayed interest initially will come to hear the lecture. Not so, on our campus. If students here went to every event that they found interesting, they would drown in less time than it takes to say “chocolate river.”

So we are left with a dilemma—should we continue to overcommit and overplan ourselves and our campus, to drink in as much activity that we can? Is it better to book every venue in Lerner, every night, with a speaker for every faction of campus life—or to consolidate our efforts a bit? The problems of discouraging numbers in attendance, lack of committed board members, and a general sense of activity ADD are all a result of the oversaturation of campus activity. But limiting the scope of activities available to those that will really draw a crowd also limits the feeling of frenetic activity and worldliness which makes our campus so great.

Perhaps it’s not actually a problem to have 10 people in the audience of a lecture, as long as they are 10 people who really want to be there. Maybe the problem lies in our focus, and our expectations of quantity over quality. When people respond enthusiastically to every event that passes in front of their eyes but attend none, there is a serious rift between the expectations of event planners and the realistic plans of the attendees. It’s this expectation-reality divide that leads to disappointment and frustration, even more than the problem of poor attendance itself.

Taking four seconds to look into the details of an event before responding with an enthusiastic “I’ll be there,” to actually gauge scheduling and interest level before making facetious commitments, would limit the attendee’s feelings of guilt at overcommitment and the event planner’s feelings of stress when people don’t show up.

I might love chocolate as much as Augustus Gloop, but I think I’ll limit my consumption to what I know I can definitely handle.

The author is a Columbia College sophomore.