Join us for our special Opening Night Dinner and Awards Ceremony, featuring a special presentation from College Unbound.
Thursday, October 22 from 6:00-8:30 pm
Adams Room, Palmer House Hotel
Tickets: $100 each; includes a three-course dinner, the Improvising Institutions program from College Unbound, the ASA Award and Prize ceremony, and our Celebration of Authors toast
Opening night has always been a can’t-miss event at our conferences, and in the ASA’s 75th year, it’s one in which we will celebrate our own as well as consider how we can better reach outside our immediate circles.
First, the program features a panel with College Unbound, one of our conference partners, which takes up a question that has become urgent for many of us, and a fitting one for an association marking 75 years: what does higher education become when the people it has long excluded help build it? Presenters Adam Bush, Bill Ayers, and Cathy Cohen will be joined by College Unbound students from Chicago, who will be in the conversation rather than simply the subject of it.
Next, we’ll present this year’s ASA awards and prizes, behind each of which is a committee that read for months and a scholar whose work changed how the rest of us think. If you know one of the winners, taught one, or were taught by one, this is the night to be there. Learn about this year’s winners here.
Finally, we’ll close out the night with our Celebration of Authors, a toast to ASA members who have published a book since last year’s meeting. If a colleague’s book came out this year, or yours did, come raise a glass. See this year’s authors and books here.
About the Ticket Price
In past years, opening night has been free, and we would have liked to keep it that way. This year we can’t.
The cost of hosting a conference keeps rising, and hotel contracts are the biggest reason why. As is standard for conference hotels, the Palmer House requires the ASA to purchase a fixed minimum of food and beverage service, at prices the hotel sets. With taxes, service charges, and labor included, the opening night dinner costs the association $220 per person. We’re only charging $100.
Part of that cost is one we’re glad to carry. The Palmer House is a union hotel, and the people cooking and serving dinner that night are paid union wages. An association whose members study labor, and whose values stand with it, shouldn’t want it any other way.
The rest of the gap is harder to absorb than members might assume. We keep conference registration below what comparable associations charge, deliberately, so that the meeting stays within reach for as many members as possible. That leaves very little room as costs climb, and rising costs are now the normal state of things rather than an exception. Registration and dues keep the conference running; they don’t build a cushion. We’ve cut everything we could cut this year. The food and beverage commitment is the one cost we can’t, and the only way to meet it is to fill the room.
We’re keeping ticket sales open past our original September 30th deadline. Every ticket goes directly towards a bill the association owes, helps us keep registration as affordable as we can, and ensures our small but mighty office staff of four are paid a living wage. We wish conferencing were cheaper. Until it is, we’d rather be honest with you about what things cost.
If you’d like to do a little more, consider buying a second ticket for someone who couldn’t otherwise afford to come, such as a graduate student, a contingent colleague, or a former student just finding their footing in the field. Your guests don’t need to be registered for the conference. Dinner tickets are printed and placed with your badge at registration, so you can buy as many as you like and hand them to your guests in person. For them, it’s a seat at the table on the first night of the conference. For the ASA, every one of those seats counts towards keeping our Association running.
We hope you’ll join us. You’ll have a good dinner in good company, and you’ll be helping keep this conference possible.