Today: Mar 18, 2024

Anderson Cooper to be postponed due to COVID-19

Amanda Cavoto – Arts & Entertainment Editor

The COVID-19 virus is on top of all the headlines and the reason journalist Anderson Cooper’s sold out appearance at the Lyman Center has been put on hold.

Associate professor of political science Jonathan Wharton said he was supposed to moderate a conversation with Anderson Cooper at the event, but was told by Director of Integrated Communications and Marketing Patrick Dilger in the first week of March that the event will be postponed.

“Obviously I understood in light of the situation,” said Wharton. “There’s little that can be done.”

The cancelation came as a result of the university shutdown on March 10 due to the coronavirus outbreak, which also caused classes to be moved online for the remainder of the semester.

Dilger reached out to Wharton back in late January or early February to coordinate the event and book it for the Mary and Louis Fusco Distinguished Lecture Series.

According to Southern’s website, the Mary and Louis Fusco Distinguished Lecture Series is a major intellectual event in the Greater New Haven area each year that brings a political, social or creative leader to campus.

Wharton said the school uses this lecture series as an opportunity to raise scholarship money for incoming students in the following fall semester.

“Now that they had to kick [the event] back I don’t know how that’d work out,” Wharton said.

English major Lupita Barajas, a junior, was supposed to attend the event with her sister.

After COVID-19 began widely spreading across the United States, Barajas said the cancelation of the event “was kind of inevitable.”

Communication major Chris Wilson, a sophomore, is the university’s assistant videographer, who would have been capturing the footage of the show.

Wilson said he was looking forward to filming the event, but said it is better safe than sorry.

“I was kind of bummed. It’s a social gathering and I love people,” Wilson said, “but there was a great risk involved.”

Since Wilson is a student employee on an hourly wage, he said he will lose the hours of compensation it takes to film and edit the event.

The Lyman Center announced this week on their website that the event will be rescheduled for Saturday, Sept. 12 at 7 p.m.

Refund information was discussed briefly, according to the Barajas, who said she received an email that said, “all originally purchased tickets for the previously scheduled event March 28th. will be honored for the new September 12 date.”

The Lyman Center website said those who do not wish to attend the rescheduled date who purchased tickets must contact Vinnie Ferrie after June 1.

Wilson said he plans to attend the rescheduled event.

“I love working these kind of events and capturing footage,” said Wilson.

Barjaras said she is looking forward to the rescheduling and “being in the same auditorium as [Anderson Cooper] and hearing whatever he has to say.”

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