“With a name like Maria de la Soledad Teresa O’Brien, I’ve had to explain my background and diversity all my life,” said journalist O’Brien Tuesday night at Langford auditorium.
A part of the Northstar Leadership Series, the conversation dealt with issues of diversity on TV, behind the scenes, and in our lives.
O’Brien addressed many students’ questions at a reception held before the event, speaking about the media, appropriate journalism and the possibility of a Bradley effect on this year’s election.
“History will be made by the election,” said O’Brien, on the diversity on both parties’ tickets. “No matter what happens, people are going to have to start thinking differently about race and gender in politics and society.”
O’Brien also drew both from her own personal experiences and different stories she’s witnessed. Specifically, O’Brien told of her parents’ illegal interracial marriage, her older sister’s challenges as a ethnic and racial minority in science, and her difficulties entering the field of journalism.
“The best advice I received from my mother was that ‘most people are idiots’,” said O’Brien, on her mother’s reaction to a society that was sometimes not approving of change. “If people put up obstacles, step around them.”
O’Brien then addressed the numerous ways people are “seizing the opportunity to change the way they think.”
From economist Fryer’s experiment of rewarding good grades to UN Food Bank’s food handout policy for school attendance, people are “thinking differently to create massive societal implications.”
As was asked of the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, it’s not “what you see now, today—it’s what you imagine that could be here in the future,” said O’Brien.
Students attending the lecture followed with many questions and comments regarding diversity and society.
"She was very articulate, and her speech definitely pointed out the needs of the multicultural society we have in this country," said junior Andres Chong-Qui.  
“I really liked her examples of turning status quo on its head,” said junior Stephanie Freeman. “There are so many things that you wouldn’t think of that would make a really big difference in the end.”
“She wasn’t lukewarm, and I feel like she has shared more of her personality and who she is,” said Tamara Jordan, second year JD/MBA student. 
