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Gonzales Not Worth the Price for Pomona Students

staff

Freedom may be priceless, but a speech by the former U.S. attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales comes with a $35,000 bill. He may be charging too much: Student leaders at Pomona College, in Southern California, recently decided Mr. Gonzales was not worth the cost.

Kelly Schwartz, chairwoman of the student government’s Speakers Committee, told The Student Life, Pomona’s student newspaper, that the decision was “a combination of not having the funding and the impression that students would not attend this event.”

Members of the committee rejected an offer from Mr. Gonzales’s agent after vocal protests from their peers and professors. In additon to his fee, Mr. Gonzales (apparently a man who enjoys the finer things in life) requested that the college foot the bill for first-class accommodations during his visit.

Thus far, Mr. Gonzales’s foray into the college speaking circuit has been shaky, to say the least. During a speaking engagement at the University of Florida in late November, two students wearing black hoods and orange T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Civil Liberties” jumped onto the stage and stood silently until they were escorted off by police officers. The students, whose costumes were intended to represent prisoners at Abu Ghraib, were arrested and charged with misdemeanors, The Independent Florida Alligator reported. The university paid Mr. Gonzales $40,000 from student fees for his hourlong speech.

Washington University in St. Louis has agreed to pay the former attorney general $35,000 to speak there in February. But the Associated Press reported that student leaders had struggled to find campus groups willing to bankroll Mr. Gonzales’s fee. —Elizabeth F. Farrell

— staff
Chronicle of Higher Education
2007-12-05


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