Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Counting Crows
So, buried in my non-minute report on the ASUC minutes from a few weeks back was the note that the Counting Crows were coming for a concert. SUPERB General Manager Eugene Chow contacted me and asked me to change that piece of information so that it would be more suggestive, or remove the "Shatners" reference. See, crazy concert people changed the contract so that they couldn't even bill the event as an event by the Shatners, but just couldn't say anything. So their mention of it in the Senate turned into a whoops moment.
I don't typically remove information upon request unless it's false, so I'm going to leave it in, which Chow seemed fine with.
However, I'm a very cynical person, and I suggested that it seemed like the concert, scheduled for April 4, was an attempt to get votes for the SUPERB fee increase. The concert, "the biggest concert this campus has seen in over 6 years" according to Chow, will be fresh in everyone's mind so that they'll forget that they haven't been getting concerts like this all year, and won't even if the fee passes. (That's the thing about "biggest-in-6-years concerts." They won't come again within most college careers)
Just like last year, when the executives scheduled all their major events to be around election time and then sent out an e-mail talking about it at election time, also reminding folks to vote, it seems like an effort to cover up an ineffective rest-of-the-year.
In response, Chow noted being on track to have an attendance record of 24,000 students this year. Of course, they have no way of knowing how many students have attended their events. Their attendance records will count attendances, but obviously many students go to more than one event. Even if they were all different students, that's still a third of campus not served. The actual proportion of students served is far lower. Is that impressive? I dunno. I certainly haven't noticed a glut of SUPERB events this year.
But that 24,000 number is interesting. The fee increase they seek is $6 a year per student for SUPERB, which with this year's enrollment and budget data means a budget boost of around $91,500. If they took that out of their attendees, it's about $4 an attendance, and if they put on more stuff and attendance goes up, that cost goes down. Are SUPERB's events simply not good enough to get attendance if people have to pay? And if so, why does that mean that everyone else should have to subsidize their inadequacy?
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