New SPEC pres. talks group's visibility, forward-looking goals

After winning the election for Social Planning and Events Committee president, College and Wharton junior Adam Thompson sat down to talk with the The Daily Pennsylvanian.

Among other topics, Thompson addressed developing Fall Fest and spreading the word about SPEC.

Daily Pennsylvanian: What are your goals for SPEC next year? Adam Thompson: We want to increase our visibility and quality of the events we produce, and we want our events to be more accessible to the Penn community, so that the Penn community is not only able to know about what we’re doing better, but also that they have more of a clearly defined choice in terms of what we do.

DP: Why did you decide to run? AT: Last year, I was treasurer of SPEC and I found that I had a wonderful understanding of how the organization worked and where we fit into the rest of Penn. I wanted to move from much more of an internal, detail-focused role to an external kind of outward-facing role.

DP: What do you think SPEC’s biggest challenge will be, and how do you plan to address it? AT: Culturally, we tend to default to the question: what did we do last year? We’re going to always be working to really formulate forward-looking goals and to not feel constrained by our history. But unfortunately it’s not always possible to do that because the way in which we’re granted funding is always backwards-looking.

DP: What would you like to see SPEC do differently this year? AT: We want to continue making Fall Fest an integral part of first semester; we want to make the event even more about student group participation. ... The event was extremely successful, especially compared to its predecessor, “There’s No Place Like Penn,” but we really want to keep the momentum going.

DP: What are you most excited about for next year? AT: I’m most excited to really keep the ball rolling. We have a lot of people that stayed on, and I would argue that the second semester of this year has been the most successful semester of SPEC since I’ve been at Penn. We are losing some great seniors in leadership, but moving forward I think we’re not only going to be reaching out more, but doing a lot better with what we do have.

DP: What is difficult or surprising about being a part of SPEC that most people might not know about? AT: A lot of people don’t know how big SPEC is, and the diversity of the programs we offer. ... We’re hoping we can leverage our more prestigious events and our more well-known and better-attended larger events to inform people about the small things we do. A good example is SPEC Special Events on Sunday is doing sushi rolling at Pod, and it’s a great example of the types of things we’re able to do that we want to do more of.

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