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We broke up three weeks ago. It was a clean break — reciprocal, no hard feelings on either end. Our relationship was, well, unusual by college standards: it was monogamous, consumed about 60 hours per week (though, like many college relationships, mostly at night) and lasted an entire year. Plus, our split was drama-free, and I’m even friends with my replacement.

But when you’re in something that committed, it’s hard to let go. So guess what, Sun? I’m back. In our month apart I’ve gotten a makeover, from the Editor in Chief you used to know to a fresh, new Sun columnist.

A recurrent and arduous quest in my years at The Sun has been to unmask the identity of the Convocation Speaker. The name of the person to take the stage on the Saturday before graduation is a closely guarded secret, akin to nuclear launch codes. The secrecy of the considerations was the source of an annual ritual dance between The Sun (me) and the Convocation Committee alongside top University officials, based on our respective roles.

Their job was to keep it secret. My job was to ferret it out. We dumpster dive; we make not-so-subtle phone calls; we attack them in bars … and buy them drinks if they haven’t yet had enough. It never seems to work.

One might ask why it is so important that the public know who is coming to campus on Memorial Day Weekend before due time. The truth is, it isn’t. “Ah well, you’re gonna have someone interesting? Someone who’s not a family member of a famous person? Well then sure, dear, we’ll come to your college graduation.”

All the speaker determines is how much you’re willing to put up with in order to hear them speak. A rainy day will still fill Schoellkopf and overflow into Hoy Field to hear Jon Stewart, but a cloud in the sky might mean that Dan Quayle will be unable to fill even the crescent of the stadium.

Unfortunately, the last few years has seen a decline in the expected rainy-day attendance of Convocation. The descending popularity from Bill Clinton to Wesley Clark to last year’s Martin Luther King III is not the fault of either the Convocation Chair or her committee. Class Council, a popularly elected student group, picks the chairperson. The chair picks her committee. This year, like in years past, the students sitting in the War Room are a representative body; they include all seven undergraduate colleges and panoply of student activities. They’ve got the right taste; they’re just struggling with the task.

One way to make to make it easier would be to just start earlier. This is not to advocate extending offers a full 18 months ahead of time; certainly that would be counterproductive. Not only would the selected speaker view the student giving the offer as strange, but it might even encourage a slow response time.

Rather, the Convocation Chair should be selected sooner. As it currently stands, the Executive Board of the senior Class Council chooses a Convocation Chair in the spring of junior year. A better idea might be to have the junior Class Council make that choice. That way, invitations to sit on the committee can be sent out in the fall semester of junior year, getting the ball rolling a few months earlier.

Added bonus: those students who would like to be involved but who plan to go abroad in the spring of their junior year can get involved with the committee; it’s when these students return to the country that the body is doing the majority of its leg-work, anyway.

At the very least, if it continues to be the senior Class Council that decides the Commander in Chief of Convocation, then they need to pick it earlier. Current Convocation Committee Chair Janine Stanisz ’07 was not named to her position until weeks after the Class Council was elected. The person needs to be named as soon as possible.

Putting the coveted list together sooner will also serve to get any ‘vetoes’ out of the way earlier in the process, apparently a major problem this year. According to a Guest Room by Stanisz, President Skorton has not agreed with student selections and “would sometimes decide not to put out offers.” Members of the committee have said that Skorton specifically eliminated politicians from the list. Skorton has said this is not true.

Still, the University needs to help out. At peer institutions, it is frequently the president of the University to make the call to potential speakers. Skorton may want to consider this as an option, because Cornell has quite a bit working against it. For one thing, the Convocation speaker is expected to bring a crowd himself — the event stands alone, held the day before graduation.

Although the committee members claim that this is a major deterrent, schools such as Harvard and Princeton have found ways to work around it. Class Day speakers, as they call them, have included Ali G in Cambridge and the likes of former Secretary of State James Baker and Bill Clinton at Princeton.

It is true that we do not give honorary degrees, that our budget is smaller than some and our weekend of festivities falls during a particularly popular vacationing time, but Cornell should be able to find a suitable speaker for Convocation. I hope that next year at this time, my successor has something to find when he goes diving through garbage cans.

At the very least, it might sweeten his breakup.

Erica Fink is The Sun’s former Editor in Chief. She can be contacted at ebf6@cornell.edu. Fink Again appears Tuesdays.

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We broke up three weeks ago. It was a clean break — reciprocal, no hard feelings on either end. Our relationship was, well, unusual by college standards: it was monogamous, consumed about 60 hours per week (though, like many college relationships, mostly at night) and lasted an entire year. Plus, our split was drama-free, and I’m even friends with my replacement.

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