"I definitely would have gone," he said. "Since they ended up handing out tickets in the end, it would have made no difference if I had signed up for the lottery or not. I still would have been able to see her."

Despite the fact that Sanders Theatre was not filled to full capacity, Lee said the lecture still drew a good showing.

"When all of the ticket stubs were counted, we found out that there were 711 people in the theatre," he said. "That's almost three--fourths full, and I would not exactly call that low attendance."

Other campus lecturers by guest speakers have been organized in different ways.

When Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General for the United Nations, spoke in Sanders Theatre on Sept. 17, the audience was admitted on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Daniel R. Bryan '02, who waited outside the doors of Sanders Theatre for over an hour to see Annan, said that the organization of Annan's lecture, as opposed to Goldberg's, empowered the attendee.

"Students had to take the initiative to get in line and to arrive there early enough to be admitted into the theatre to see Annan," he said. "With Whoopi, the lottery took away the students' control."

But Christine Y. Chiou '01 said she felt that the Goldberg lecture might also have been poorly publicized.

"This is just completely different from when Nelson Mandela or Kofi Annan came to speak to us," she said. "With them, I knew about the lectures because of word of mouth. But no one was even talking about Whoopi coming to speak to us."

"I am not sure whether this is indicative of bad publicity or just student apathy," Chiou said.