Lottery winners set for Albright's speech at Irvine

Diplomacy and foreign relations will take over Irvine Auditorium tonight at 8 p.m. when former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright addresses a crowd of 1,100 Penn students in Irvine Auditorium. The lecture is being presented by the Provost's Spotlight Series and the Social Planning and Event's Committee's Connaissance, which brings a major political or entertainment figure to campus each semester. Tickets for the sold-out event were available through an online lottery which lasted from midnight March 20 to 11:59 p.m. March 24. Many more students applied for tickets than Irvine is capable of holding. Six-hundred students were selected through the lottery and then allowed to purchase two tickets at $10 apiece. As a result, SPEC and the Spotlight Series announced yesterday that an additional 300 students would be able to watch a simulcast of Albright's lecture in Houston Hall's Hall of Flags. The great interest in Albright's lecture is a contrast with the disappointing showing for last semester's talk by former basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who drew only 200 people to Irvine. SPEC Connaissance Co-Chairwoman and College junior Andrea Zawerczuk said that she felt it was impossible to compare the lecture by Abdul-Jabbar to the coming speech by Albright, calling the former secretary of state "one of the most prominent women in the world." Connaissance Co-Director and College senior Nischay Maskay said he expects that Albright will be an engaging speaker. "She's going to be talking about some pretty interesting issues," Maskay said. "It's clear that she's still very much involved" in international relations. According to Maskay, students faced tough competition in the online ticket lottery. "There was a tremendous demand for tickets," Maskay said. "[The odds] were pretty slim, obviously. Because of that, we wanted to make [the lecture] available to as many people as we possibly could." The Hall of Flags simulcast is free and open to all PennCard holders. Admission will be decided on a first-come, first-serve basis. Maskay said that the idea of a simulcast was discussed with Albright's staff before the final decision was made. Zawerczuk said that the Hall of Flags was chosen for the simulcast because it is "the largest space available outside Irvine." And last week, SPEC Connaissance Publicity Director Kelley Perkins said that SPEC expected Albright to be a hit on campus. "I think people are pretty excited about it," Perkins said. "I think she's going to be well received on campus." Perkins anticipates that Albright's speech will draw a similar reaction to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 1999 fall address. Albright was the first female secretary of state and the highest-ranking woman ever to hold public office. She is expected to discuss her own past as well as her future vision for the nation. Her 45-minute address will be followed by a question-and-answer session. The doors to the simulcast will open at 7:30.