This Issues in Communication narrative is designed to provoke individual thought or discussion about concepts raised in the chapter.

Mary Reich is the new dean of students at Central University. Among her many responsibilities is speaking to student groups on campus. Kerri, a member of one of the sororities on campus, asked Mary if she’d be willing to appear at an event to speak about the university’s initiatives to address the drinking epidemic among college students. At the time she was asked, Mary was preoccupied with some other work and she didn’t inquire about any of the details. Since the event was a few weeks away, she planned to contact Kerri closer to the event and get the necessary details. Although she penned the event into her daily scheduler, Mary got wrapped up in her many new job responsibilities and forgot about the speech until the day before the event.

Despite her best intentions, Mary hadn’t made time to contact Kerri before the event. She recalled that she was to talk about the university’s initiatives to cope with the drinking epidemic on campus, and she had her assistant find out where she needed to be. She wasn’t worried about the speech itself because she had public-speaking engagements all the time and was well versed in the subject matter. She was proud of the work the university had done to address the drinking crisis on campus.

When Mary got to the event, she was surprised to see many people she recognized as representatives of student government. She didn’t see any of the leaders from the school’s sororities and fraternities. Kerri came up to Mary to thank her for coming to speak to the student government. “We’re quite interested in hearing what you have to say. We’re concerned that the administration has gone too far without seeking the input of student government,” Kerri said. Unfortunately, Mary didn’t realize that Kerri was also a student government representative. She knew Kerri was in a sorority, so she had made the assumption that she would be speaking to fraternity and sorority members. Now, instead of speaking to an audience who was receptive to the university’s initiatives, she had to stand before a hostile group, and she wasn’t sure she was prepared for that.

Apply what you have learned about audience analysis as you ponder and discuss the following questions: What steps could Mary have taken to better prepare for her speech? How do you think she’ll adapt her speech given what she knows about her audience? In what ways would her speech have been different if she really was speaking to fraternity and sorority members?