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Sep082009

A Meeting Gone Right

Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 12:09AM

This article originally appeared on the OCN blog in Feb 2009.

Gena Gorlin, the founder and former president of the Tufts Objectivist Club, shared the following story about a meeting gone right:

One particularly successful meeting of our campus club began with a reading of Ayn Rand’s article, "Philosophy: Who Needs It." I had chosen this article to motivate newer, less experienced attendees to continue attending meetings and pursuing their interest in Ayn Rand’s philosophy. So, before we started, I asked everyone to go around and introduce themselves, briefly describing their level of familiarity with Ayn Rand and Objectivism. I wanted to gauge the level of students’ knowledge and familiarity so that I could tailor the discussion accordingly. Since it was early in the semester, many students present were first-time attendees and fairly new to philosophy in general and Objectivism in particular. If it had turned out that most of attendees were more experienced, returning members, I might have chosen a different, more specialized article from my box of reading materials instead.

Seeing that there were even more newbies at the meeting than I had expected, I proceeded to distribute a copy of the article, "Philosophy: Who Needs It," to each attendee. I had enough to go around, since ARI provides these pamphlets for free to campus clubs. Then we all took turns reading aloud, one paragraph at a time.

The reading of Part 1 of the article took approximately 20 minutes, so we devoted the rest of the meeting to discussing it. Acting as a moderator, I opened the discussion with a few questions I had prepared in advance. For instance: Can people think of some examples in their own lives that further concretize the point she was making in this essay? How is her view of philosophy and its role different from the conception of philosophy that the attendees might have come in with?

I asked one question at a time, and then I opened the floor to discussion. Attendees would raise their hands and I would call on them, in order to facilitate an organized conversation. When the newer attendees asked questions or made comments that clearly stemmed from a misunderstanding of the article or from a different error or confusion that could easily be corrected, I called on the more experienced and knowledgeable Objectivists in the room to weigh in. Sometimes I would chime in myself, but I tried to keep my own comments to a minimum so as not to create a classroom-like atmosphere; as much as possible, I restricted my role to that of a moderator.

The meeting was especially successful in a number of ways. For one, it was among the most interactive meetings I had ever conducted—virtually everyone in the room did a fair amount of talking and seemed engaged throughout the meeting. No one left in the middle or started to nod off, because everyone felt included and involved in the discussion. On the other hand, unlike some of the other interactive meetings I’d held, this one did not disintegrate into unrelated conversational threads or bouts of bickering. Because we were discussing a specific article that was fresh in everyone’s minds, and because I had prepared a set of questions to focus the conversation, the discussion was structured and philosophically substantive. Most of the students who attended that meeting came back for the next.

The main lessons I learned from that meeting were:

Consider the context of the students at your meeting (the level of knowledge and familiarity, the particular motivation for attendance, etc.), and plan out your materials and discussion accordingly.
Come prepared enough to be flexible. Gauge your audience on the spot and have several different possible materials on hand in case you get a different set of attendees than you expected.
Make it as interactive as possible, but provide enough content (usually in the form of Objectivist lectures, debates, or articles) and directional cues (usually in the form of questions) to keep the discussion focused.
Present the content right on the spot instead of assigning it in advance.

As future meetings attested, these ingredients really do work—it was not just a matter of luck that we had such a satisfying meeting that day.

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