TED Talks came back to Carleton with a twist on March 20.
The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) and Carleton Academic Student Government (CASG), along with Carleton’s vice-president (research and international) hosted TEDx for the first time since 2010, putting a particular emphasis on student involvement.
The last time the talks came to campus it wasn’t truly a Carleton event, said CASG president Andrew Kwai, who helped organize the event.
“All the guests were people from the community, high-profile people, so it was really kind of very exclusive,” Kwai said. “And this year, talking with the CUSA president, we wanted to do something for the students. So we brought it back to Carleton, all the speakers are from Carleton and everybody in attendance will also be from Carleton.”
There were also three student speakers, which Kwai said was important.
“Well, this is an event that’s being put on by a student association, so it’s coming out of students’ pockets. We really wanted to give back to the students.”
CUSA president Alexander Golovko said he agreed that student involvement was important.
“We wanted to present our students with an opportunity to share their ideas, their research, and what they really care about,” he said.
And Kwai said it was all about bringing in new ideas.
“We want fresh and new ideas. We don’t want people that are already in the middle of their careers and on track and know what they want to do. We want to hopefully inspire minds that have yet to decide,” he said.
One of these students was Trevor Deley, a third-year neuroscience and philosophy student. His talk focused on whether people were inherently (biologically) selfish or selfless.
He began his talk by pointing out that university tends to make students more cynical, and challenged audience members to see the world in a better light.
“What if everyone in the world believed that the world was a great place? Would that make it true? Maybe not. But would it make it better? I think yes,” he said.
Deley’s talk fit in with the theme of the night: “Reinventing the ordinary.”
So did Steven Cooke’s talk. The Carleton environmental science and biology professor focused his talk on one of the most seemingly ordinary acts: fishing.
While his talk was filled with statistics, his message was less factual. He simply hoped that, in the future, more people would take up fishing and form a closer bond to nature and the world we live in.
But there’s more to it than the speakers.
In large part, these events are about what the audience takes away. And for this TEDx event, organizers were quick to ensure that many— if not all— the audience members would be students.
“It was a great opportunity to get students to come out and have their mind challenged a little bit,” Golovko said.
And some of the speakers agreed.
“The mission statement of TED Talks is ‘ideas worth spreading,’ and I think university is a good place for that,” Deley said. “Especially when you have young people, it creates a good network for change, new ideas, and innovation.”
