How Assembly Topics Are Chosen
By CAROL LEE, AARYAN PATEL, SEAN RICARD, and KEVIN THANT
Each week, all Exonians are required to attend one or two assembly talks regarding a wide range of topics offered by current event speakers and alumni sharing their experiences at the Academy. However, what goes unseen behind these 30-minute sessions is a long checklist of selecting speakers based on their past and the academy’s goals and working out the logistics. The bulk of this work is done by the assembly selection committee, a five-person group including Leigh Drapeau, Ranilla Haider, Nat Hawkins, Aykut Kilinc, and Rabbi Jennifer Marx Asch. This week, The Exonian spoke with a variety of community members, including the faculty on the assembly committee, students, and teachers, to uncover the logistics and thinking behind selecting assembly speakers and the community’s opinions.
At the head of all is Instructor in History Aykut Kilinc, the Assembly Committee’s coordinator, who is in charge of planning the assemblies for the year. “I think it’s an important part of our curriculum. One of those required meetings that we all get together as a community usually twice a week,” Kilinc commented when asked about his motivations to join the committee. “It intrigued me to be part of this decision-making process.”
Kilinc recently took over as head of the assembly committee, succeeding Mr. Matthew Miller. This year, he was in charge of filling in holes in Miller’s previous assembly schedule. “Predominantly, we have been getting recommendations and advice from our community members.” Additionally, “the work is mostly the institutional connections that we have been making assembly speaker decisions,” Kilinc said.
The process begins for the assembly committee by creating the calendar for next year in the prior summer. However, the assembly committee is doing something different for next year’s calendar. “Our goal moving forward for the next academic year as the assembly committee is to reach out to our community community members. We are going to share a survey with the entire community, both students, colleagues, and faculty to evaluate how this year went,” Kilinc highlighted.
This would allow the opinions of community members to be heard and actually affect future assemblies. One example of some advice was from Elizabeth Calandra, Instructor in Theater and Dance, who explained, “I do think sometimes they can be a little bit redundant, so I wish there was a little bit more diversity in the type of speakers that we brought in.” Furthermore, another suggestion Calandra offered was, “I wish certain assemblies were optional for students to opt out of going to if they thought that topic would make them specifically uncomfortable because of something they fit through topics that would be discussed.”
Lower Crane Lee gave similar insights, “Over my time at Exeter, there have been some assemblies which I’ve been very inspired by and others which I didn’t connect as much.”
Senior Max Mantel gave his thoughts on how community members often judge assemblies, “[There are] some assembly topics that just generally aren’t for me, and I feel like deeming it as such and then walking up being like, I didn’t like that, is of course immature.” Contrarily, he then continued on what makes a good assembly, regardless of the specific topic, “[At] the same time, I think that a good assembly is just engaging and interesting. It can be in a variety of ways.” Mantel believes that while not all assemblies are for everyone, all assemblies have the potential to be impactful for students.
Kilinc is a strong believer in the assembly’s impact on the community. “I have a voice in our selection procedure on who we should be bringing to our community. Our goal is to bring the best and the brightest people in their field who would inspire our students.”
Obviously, there are challenges to bringing in acclaimed speakers to give an hour-long talk in rural New Hampshire. However, “when people see an email from the Academy [inviting them to speak], they usually consider and respond,” Kilinc shared.
He also explained another limitation regarding the committee’s budget. “In order to demonstrate our gratitude there is usually an honorarium involved. The public footprint of the individual determines the honorarium of the guest speaker.” However, for people like alumni and friends of the institution, this is not always the case. “They’re extremely generous, and they don’t want an honorarium. But in most cases, our limitation is our budget,” shared Kilinc.
With the assembly hall being renovated next year, the assembly committee will face challenges in gathering the community for future assemblies.
Kilinc concluded, “We will have some limitations for next year, but we are hoping to use the survey as our guide to try to create diverse and electric programming so that our community truly enjoys going to the assembly and hopefully be inspired by our guests’ stories.”