The Oxford Guild has announced that Kanye West will be giving a talk at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
At 11pm this evening (March 1st), the Guild’s Facebook page created an event entitled “Kanye West speaks to the Oxford Guild Business Society”, and reported that West would be speaking at the Museum of Natural History tomorrow (March 2nd), at 3pm.
According to the event page, the first batch of tickets will go on sale at midnight, with further releases at 2am, and at 9am tomorrow morning.
Students were encouraged to sign up to a random ballot for tickets. However, the organisers were keen to emphasise that students would be chosen completely at random.
The Guild told Cherwell that as of 12.30am, over 1,800 students had balloted for tickets.
Once selected, students will have two hours in which to buy their tickets before the link expires.
Abbas Kazmi, Chairman of the Oxford Guild, told Cherwell, “We are very excited to be hosting such an inspiring and high profile a speaker as the legendary Kanye West and expect it to be a fascinating and memorable event.
“It is great to see the hard work pay off after having spent many hours negotiating against the odds and keeping things under wraps to secure this event, which is a real coup for the Guild, which I am proud to see continuing to grow from strength to strength, reaching even higher heights and winning ever more national awards and accolades.”
He continued to thank the Guild committee, and went on to say, “This is the first in a series of incredibly high profile speakers the Guild has lined up. We have been working industriously behind the scenes and would recommend you watch this space!”
There has been no word yet on the subject of West’s speech, but the rapper has been outspoken about business in recent years, condeming, among others, Louis Veitton.
West is in the UK for the Brit Awards, where he performed on February 25th, revealing on Twitter last night that his upcoming album is to be titled So Help Me God.
So Help Me God pic.twitter.com/e3UUsQQEts
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) March 1, 2015
Kazmi also told Cherwell that a full video of the talk will be available, and explained the reasoning behind the event’s ticketing system. “We do not want students to waste their afternoons queuing outside the Union chamber Frewin Court for example, only not to be let in and to be left disappointed. Nor do we want students to ballot and then not turn up leaving empty seats which have been taken by others.”
He also emphasised that only Oxford-registered emails would be valid in the ballot.
Sean O’Neill, of Hertford College, was one of the first students to secure a ticket. He remarked to Cherwell, “I get to be in the same room as Kanye West! This is so great it almost makes me like the Oxford Guild.”
Oliver Johnston-Watt, a member of the general committee, commented, “Aside from the executive, only two other committee members knew about this. When the first e-mail came in I thought it was some kind of joke but with Kanye being in the UK at the moment for the Brits it all started to make sense.
He remarked that it was “absolutely outrageous for any student society to bring in a speaker like Kanye West.
“Clearly,” he continued, “the Oxford Guild mean business.”
