COURTESY PHOTO
Student Activities will host its second Distinguished Speaker Series virtually this semester with actress Lana Condor at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 16. Condor is best known for her acting role as Lara Jean Covey in the Netflix movie series “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.”
Cindy Mata-Vasquez, director of Student Activities, said this program was carried over from one of the legacy institutions.
“We’re now, I believe, in our 18th season and so, over the years, we’ve been able to bring once-in-a-lifetime speakers to the university so that students can not only participate in the lectures but also listen to inspiring messages from all of them,” Mata-Vasquez said. “We’ve brought everything from renowned scientists, Nobel laureates, past presidents, even world leaders and some athletes as well and well-known people in the business community.”
She will moderate the conversation with Condor.
“It’s something new for me, but I’m excited to have that conversation and ask her some questions and just get to know her a little bit better and see how she can inspire our students,” Mata-Vasquez said.
She said bringing someone with her background would be great for students to listen to.
“She has had a very different story and, so, it’ll be interesting to hear her speak to our students,” Mata-Vasquez said. “I mean, she was adopted. She and her brother were adopted from Vietnam as babies, and so they grew up in the U.S. I think she’s also battled some, like, body image issues, of course, being in Hollywood. And then, now, you know, she’s been very successful with, almost, an overnight success.”
Linda Chapman, a mass communication senior, said she has previously attended the Distinguished Speaker Series.
“The last one with John Quiñones was my first distinguished speaker and I have never gone to it before, so I wanted to try it out, see what it was like and I really enjoyed it,” Chapman said. “I loved everything he said. The advice was amazing. And he was very inspirational to me.”
She is interested in what Condor has to say because she is only a few years older than her and she has done so much.
“So, I want to know what kinds of questions she’s going to get because I haven’t seen too much of her, so I’m going to be learning a lot from what she has to say,” Chapman said. “I like listening to interviews. I’m a fan of, like, celebrities because of their journeys. With Lana, I first saw her on “X-Men” and so I became a fan. And then, I like cheesy comedy rom coms and all that kind of stuff, so when I saw that she was in the series of “To all the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” I was, like, ‘OK, I like her.’ I want to see what she has to say with this speaker series.”
Asked what questions she would ask Condor, Chapman replied that she would like to know the challenges she has been through to get to where she is now.
“Because she has done a lot and the movie she’s been in have been very successful, so I want to know, like, not just the good of it, but what she had to go through to get there,” she said.
Priscila Gomez, a graphic design junior, said this will be her first time attending a Distinguished Speaker Series lecture.
Gomez said she and her friends are excited to learn more about Condor as she is a great inspiration to a lot of people.
“I have followed her for a little bit,” she said. “And she’s spoken so much to a lot of people and that’s why I am really excited to be in that meeting.”
Gomez would ask Condor how she manages her acting career, personal life and manage to stay centered and balanced.
Asked who she would like to see next in the speaker series, she replied, “I think it would be good having someone that just has an objective opinion about things and someone that can really bring a different perspective on what we have here in the [Rio Grande] Valley because I know for some things, we kind of live in a bubble. And up there in the state or even in other states, they have problems that we may not be facing here. … But just someone that can bring an outer perspective or life outside the Valley.”
