Vice-President Al Gore, poet Maya Angelou, actress Ellen DeGeneres, author Tom Wolfe and baseball pitcher Jim Abbott are among the 38 people who have been invited to speak at the Class of 1998 Senior Symposium in April, event organizers said yesterday.
The theme for the April 20-22 series of speaker will be "Challenging the Status Quo: Modern Day Revolutionaries," which members of the committee say will be relevant to seniors and broad enough to accommodate a variety of interesting speakers.
Co-Chair Kevin Arista '98 said, "We thought this theme would allow us to include science, technology and the arts -- things that would include the Dartmouth community as a whole."
The theme relates to students' entering the job world after commencement.
"People are graduating and moving out, and they are looking for what to do after they graduate, and what goals to accomplish," co-Chair Anne Kanyusik '98 said.
Arista said the committee hopes the symposium will inspire students to "change things for the better in whatever career they go to after they graduate."
The committee has not yet received any response to the invitations. The Class of 1978 began the senior symposium as an intellectual gift of the senior class to the College.
The committee is working in conjunction with the Hopkins Center to plan some arts events related to the theme.
Arista said one possibility is a performance by the former band members who played with Art Blakey, a revolutionary jazz drummer.
All plans for symposium activities and speakers should be concrete by the middle of Winter term.
