The Ninth Annual Students’ Forum, featuring guest speakers Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of President George W. Bush, and Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, was scheduled to take place on Monday, Feb. 9.
Due to inclement weather on Monday, however, the forum has been rescheduled for March 25 in the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts.
“Realizing how perilous the road conditions would be, we thought it was prudent to defer the event to a later date,” said Philip Eliasoph, professor of visual and performing arts and founding director and moderator for the forum. “The next availability when the ‘sun, the moon and the stars’ could all be in alignment — the two invited speakers, our student participants, and the Quick Center was open — became March 25.”
The forum, titled “Growing up in the Political Eye: Private Lives in Public Spaces,” will be the first time members of both the Bush and Pelosi families will work together on a project, according to Sophomore Class President Jason Abate, a student panelist for the forum.
Abate and the other student panelists were chosen based on their leadership positions at Fairfield.
At the forum, Hager and Pelosi will discuss what it was like to grow up in two of the most influential political families of early 21st century America, as both Hager’s father and grandfather were presidents, and Pelosi’s mother was the first female Speaker of the House.
However, the forum will focus more on “what they accomplished as students and where they took their careers,” Joanna Durgin ’15, a Resident Assistant in Loyola Hall and vice president of the Economics Club, said. “We want to hear how those experiences shaped them, rather than just their parents.”
Hager is a special correspondent for NBC’s TODAY show and a contributor to the NBC Nightly News, as well as an author and editor-at-large for Southern Living magazine. Pelosi is a director, producer, cinematographer, writer and political activist.
“They are two very successful people independent of their last names,” Abate added. Going into the forum, Abate and the student panelists wanted to see “how they could give advice for succeeding in the media beyond getting that diploma.”
From Hager’s and Pelosi’s talks of the different career paths they took, Durgin hopes that her peers can realize how “you don’t necessarily have to go in the same direction that your family leans towards, and that you can really make a name for yourself.”
Abate and Durgin hope the fact that Hager and Pelosi have never worked together before for an event will draw in a substantial crowd, aside from the fact that both speakers come from highly influential families.
“With such big names as these, I think a lot of students might recognize the names, but it’s also going to draw in a lot of people from the community,” Durgin said. “So I think the tickets are definitely going to be in high demand.”
For Eliasoph, the postponement of the forum should lead to “an even larger student audience awaiting this much anticipated event next month.”
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