When I was in high school, I was inspired by TED videos and its idea to share people’s thinking with the world. I started watching a lot of its videos, and became a translator, to help bring TED’s videos to more people in the country. The deeper I dived in, the more I wanted to become a TEDx organizer, because it’s still not very popular in the community. Finally, when I came to university, I had a chance, but some people still block my way to reach the end.

The story begins when I told my friends about my idea of a TEDx event inside the university. They really liked it, and even helped me start this project. We still are students, so a approval from teacher is required to organize an legal event in a university. At first, I thought that’s weird, but actually, it’s good because it can help prevent many meaningless events from going rampant. We brought this idea to some teachers, and they loved it too. They assured that, if we have an idea that help local students, just do it. Luckily, it’s also the purpose of this event, so to this point, we were 100% proud of the bright future of this event.

But things are always not as you expected.

In the last minutes, when we prepared our event proposal to the school administrators, they somehow denied and told me that:

A student like you never can organize such an event like this, and the reponsibility of a student is studying and working in projects, companies, … Events like it are really hard to be held, even teachers can’t either. You should study instead, not organize events like this to get nothing.

They even gave a reason that:

“An event held by a foreign organization could inteprete the university’s reputation”

“We concern about the political issues that a foreign organization can make during the event, that could lead to some very serious problems with the authorities”.

Q: What could you do when a speaker accidentially (or intentionally) disclose some sensitive information?

A: Just don’t make it happen, TED has regulations for that too.

Q: Why do you trust organizations like TED?

A: …

Why did they say that? I asked them, and the answer is simple: if you can prove it, prove it before showing any more detail.

And they even didn’t give me any chances to prove.

This is a common story among some universities. Let’s talk about it.

Fisrt, if the event is good for the university, you can organize it. If not? DIY.

What is a good event? It doesn’t harm the university in all ways.

Does it need to be benefical to students? No, just don’t harm the university’s reputation.

What does that mean by “benefical to students”? They get points for joining that.

Second, an event in the university must reflect the university brand in it, for example, you should create an event which topic is about something in that university. This, of course, violate the regulation of TED about the aim of the event:

TEDx events are independent:

• Because TEDx events are stand-alone events, they may not be combined with or integrated into any conference, ceremony, event, or curriculum.
• TEDx events cannot be co-branded: you may not connect the TEDx logo/identity/name to the name of another organization, non-profit, corporation or other entity.
• You may not present your TEDx event as being organized by such entities or positioned as one of their offerings.

Third, if you are a regular student, never dream of organizing an event easily. This’s all about relationship, where a regular student like me, who do not attend any groups in the university, do not know many powerfull people in school, do not have the right to prove my idea is better than others. That sounds ridiculous, because I pay for what I receive, and I now received what?

After that denial, we tried so hard to prove to the administrators, but it all leaded to a new dark side of this university: The univeristy is a very complicated system, which makes a very simple problem become serious. To make things work, you have to contact, persue a lot of people, and that is a vicious circle I have to step in.

My TEDx event type is Universities, which means it should be held in university scale, not a small group scale, so in other word, a TEDx event in this university is impossible because, the teacher just don’t like and don’t trust a normal student.

One more thing about this university, it is famous for its very hard subjects, mainly about theories and really little on-job practice. This makes students have to focus on studying and don’t have many time to do other work. When I recruited members for the project, a lot of people wanted to join in, but they can’t be sure about the amout of time spending on the project. All of the answers I can hear is, “sorry, I have to study for the final exam”, or “damn, last semester is too bad and I don’t want to make it happen again”. Not all students are like that, but it is enough to make this school stand out from the rest, a “technical university”.

Many events in this university are held by students and some organizations, but all of them have to go through administrator’s review process. We’re good about that, but they eventually lost theirs values when students only participate if they can get points for their score board. The more points you can get (maximum 100), the more active you are. (!?)

A motivation of this is scholar, and the fear of geting Fs. This makes the whole things you do in school is for your points in paper.

That’s why I cancel this project and organize another TEDx event that can not be affected by any organizations. So it is good that we are independent from anyone, just make a plan and glue thing together. But it is also a downside, when we have to manage to find sponsors, speakers, while many members in my team don’t have any experiences in these fields. And of course, the COVID pandemic also prevent us from making any progress. In other words, it is frozen. But my story hasn’t come to the end yet, and we are trying many ways to make it possible.

So if you are an energetic person, or if you have a lot of ideas, please do not choose universities that’s heavy on theories, study and close-mind. These schools don’t deserve to be your choice.

If you want to support my event, there are many ways to do it:

• If you have an idea you want to share, apply for the speakers of the event.
• If you want to join and help us make the event available to public, let us know via fanpage or e-mail.
• If you want to sponsor this project, we are happy to receive that.
• If you are enterprises and want to collaborate with us during the event, we will discuss on what both sides can do.
• If you don’t know what to do? Share it so that we can reach out more people in local community!

Here is how you can know about my project and reach us:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tedxbachkhoa
• Website: https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/47056
• Email: tedx.bachkhoa@outlook.com

If you like my story, why not sharing it or support me on later articles? Thank you <3