I hate when I’m embarrassed to be an MSU student.

It almost never happens, but I felt it as I was leaving Thursday’s lecture with filmmaker Spike Lee.

The moderator was so out of place that, not only did Lee seem upset and embarrassed by the end of the program, but people in the audience were embarrassed for him.

The moderator made jokes that were out of place, threw his own interpretations onto nearly every question and made no attempt to weed out less-than-stellar examples of student questioning.

Lee said he’d be happy to entertain “intelligent questions,” yet he was made to answer questions like, “So, can I be in your next movie?”

The shining moment of the evening was when Lee paused to think before answering a question and the moderator, clearly not paying any attention whatsoever, began to ask the next question. Fortunately, Lee interrupted the new question and continued answering the previous one - momentarily stunning the moderator.

It went on like this all night long.

If MSU is going to continue inviting the entertainment industry’s best and brightest to campus to talk to students, can we please get someone to moderate who has an idea of what’s happening and a clue about how to deal with someone who gave up his time and a good deal of dignity to visit our campus?

Adam Crocker
telecommunication senior