Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe to be 2009 Convocation Speaker

At today’s Student Assembly meeting C.J. Slicklen, Chairman of the Convocation Committee and former SA President, announced that Barack Obama’s Campaign Manager, David Plouffe, will be the keynote speaker at this year’s convocation.

Plouffe, who does not hold a college degree, will speak at the event on Noon Saturday, May 23rd at Schoellkopf Stadium, one day before the class of 2009 graduates.
The announcement of this year’s speaker has come earlier than in previous years. Soledad O’Brien was not announced as the 2007 Convocation speaker until April 4th of that year, one day before she was demoted at her job as the host of American Morning on CNN, and last year’s speaker, uber-poet Maya Angelou, was not announced until March 27th.

The early announcement is possibly due to the use of an agent, the Washington Speaker’s Bureau. Slicklen could not comment as to whether the use of the agent was a result of the Committee’s inability to secure a suitable speaker on their own.

The selection of the Chief Campaign Manager of Obama for America comes as a surprise to some people seeing as Slicklen is an “out of the closet” Republican. Something he makes clear in his October 21, 2008 article in the Sun. However Slicklen justifies this by saying he “Put the needs of the committee before personal politics” adding that he thinks the audience will be “wowed by his speech” that he claims won’t focus on politics but rather his personal experiences.

Plouffe is currently “between campaigns” and is working on writing his first book: The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory.

According to C.J. Slicklen, the 2009 Convocation Chair, the speaker for the Class of 2009 will be announced at the S.A. meeting today at 4:45pm.

More to come when the news breaks.