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Spent $200 on a guest speaker who got shouted down in 10 minutes
Booked a climate policy expert for our campus forum at Ohio State last month, paid $200 and she couldn't finish her opening slide. A group from the Young Republicans kept interrupting with questions about carbon taxes, then someone tossed a water bottle. Event ended early, admin issued a warning to the group, but I got zero refund. Anyone else waste money on a speaker that never got to talk, and how do you vet the crowd better next time?
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pat_stone4h ago
Used to figure if the topic was good enough the crowd would just behave, and honestly that idea died for me after watching a similar mess at a debate night in Columbus. A guy I helped book for a housing panel got maybe four minutes in before a handful of people started yelling over him about rent control, and the mods just froze. What saved us was having two student volunteers planted up front whose only job was to cut off anyone talking over the speaker and walk them out if they kept at it. Sounds like overkill until you eat a $200 loss over a water bottle.
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