By Rashah McChesney

Daily Staff Writer

The University of Northern Iowa announced the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet is scheduled to visit its campus on May 18 to speak about his views on education.

There will be a panel discussion at the McLeod Center from 9:30–11 a.m. the same day and then his keynote speech will be from 2–3:30.

The tickets, which went on sale Friday, were between $15 and $50.

“The available tickets we had that went on sale Friday were pretty much gone as of late Friday morning,” said Jan Hanish, assistant vice president of outreach and special programs at UNI. “We’ve been taking names of people who would still like tickets and putting them on a waiting list.”

Nick Spyrison, sophomore in physics and member of the Karma Kagyu student group on campus, said he’d love to see the Dalai Lama but hadn’t yet gotten tickets.

“It slipped my mind the day of and I didn’t get on until that night, and for the main program they were already making the waiting list,” Spyrison said.

Hanish said Northern Iowa was working to expand the seating in the McLeod Center to accommodate more people.

The Dalai Lamas are said to be physical manifestations of enlightened beings who choose to serve humanity instead of attaining nirvana, according to www.dalailama.com.

While the Dalai Lama is both the head of state and spiritual leader of Tibet, he has been living in exile in northern India since 1959.

Spyrison said he thought the visit would help highlight the political strife occuring in Tibet and also give people who attended the chance to see a world leader who promotes compassion and similarity between religions.

“He’s always been a big supporter of education and he’s very science oriented as far as religious people go,” Spyrison said.

“He’s always said that if science overturns some of your beliefs you should rethink your beliefs.”