Tickets remain for Anita Hill

Approximately 200 remaining tickets for University of Oklahoma Law Professor Anita Hill's lecture Saturday will be available starting at noon today on 36th Street and Locust Walk, Connaissance Chairperson Meg O'Leary said yesterday. Connaissance members, who gave away about 700 tickets on Monday in approximately two hours, will give out its last tickets today on a first-come-first-served basis. O'Leary said the group would have distributed the tickets until the supply ran out on Monday, but one Connaissance member mistakenly walked away with the 200 tickets she was scheduled to hand out. O'Leary said she knew tickets to the lecture would be popular, but said she did not anticipate the rush for tickets. "We knew they would go quickly," the College junior said. But, "they went much more quickly than we had expected." Members of the University community with a valid PennCard can pick up one ticket each for free today. Connaissance and the Women's Studies Program's Judy Berkowitz Endowed Lectureship are co-sponsoring Hill's visit. The $11,000 cost was shared by the two groups. Women's Studies is in charge of distributing the tickets for the other 800 seats in Irvine Auditorium for the lecture, O'Leary said. She criticized Women's Studies for not making more tickets available to students. "We want as many students as possible [to attend] . . . Our primary interest is in the students," O'Leary said. "We think they put their personal interests ahead of the University's." O'Leary said Women's Studies invited members of their "constituencies," which include members of the Penn Women's Trustees Council. Program officials also provided an open sign-up sheet at the Law School, she said. "It has gone beyond a VIP list," O'Leary said. "It's 800 people large. That's just not reasonable." O'Leary added that if Women's Studies has any tickets remaining, they will become available to students, but said she does not know if there are any left. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, director of the Women's Studies Program, could not be reached for comment last night. A message on Women's Studies' Voice Mail yesterday said the program is "attempting to arrange for a hall for more seating or for a closed circuit TV presentation." Some students who waited in the ticket line Monday, which at one point extended down Locust Walk almost to Steinberg-Dietrich Hall, said they were upset that they did not get a seat. "I thought it would be easier to get a ticket," College sophomore Davora Cohen said. "I was a little disappointed." Hill, who is known for testifying that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her several years ago, will speak at 5 p.m. on Saturday in Irvine Auditorium.

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