Earlier this year I was sitting in the CFTA, listening to one of our guest speakers, when I tried to recall some prior ones we had in the year. I could only recall one. When I tried doing the same thing for last year, I could barely recall one, and I couldn’t remember one from my 3rd form year. I didn’t remember thinking that any of the speakers we had were bad, I thought that alot of our speakers were great, but a lot of them were just difficult to recall. But then something kind of became clear. It was because of the amount of guest speakers we have. 

 Every year, the school tries to bring in new and interesting people to campus, in the hopes of showing new perspectives and worldviews to Hill. And even though every speaker delivers, most people don’t tend to remember much about their talks later. And I think the cause of that is the number of the speakers that come in. We have upwards of 10 come each year, which while a great sign for the pull the school has, leads to students being a little overbeared with the number of speakers that come in. “It’s like we have so many speakers come in, I can’t remember who’s who” said Connor Rauch ‘27.  

And it’s an opinion I’ve heard fairly often. The speakers brought in are good, but most people don’t tend to remember them. And I believe that it’s directly connected to the number of speakers that the school has. Having many varied talks is great, but for a message to truly resonate less can be more. Chapel separates itself as the audience knows the speaker on a personal level sometimes, and even then we don’t remember most chapel talks that happen throughout the year off the top of our heads.  

The simple fact is that the amount of guest speakers coming in ends up diminishing the specialness of the event. If we have a lot of guest speakers throughout the year, we don’t really end up seeing the speaker as the noteworthy person they are. If you have a Nobel Prize winner come in every other week, at some point people aren’t going to listen as closely as they did with the first one. The simple fact is that many people don’t really see the speakers as a unique event because there are so many of them. Jason Smith ’27 said that “we have a new speaker every other week, and we don’t really know anything about them before the speech.”   

So what could be done to help make these talks more memorable and meaningful for students? Generally, I think the main thing to do would be have fewer. It doesn’t mean we should have one or two come in throughout the entire year, but maybe have a smaller number, so every guest speaker that comes to Hill is an event and something that students would care about. I also think that having more announcements and making more people aware of the person before the talk would help people come in and already be interested in the person, and just have that talk be that much more impactful.  

“I remember Colson Whitehead more than any other speaker because I read his book before his talk,” Connor Rauch ’27 said.