A sold-out Tribe Called Quest concert Friday. A jam-packed Steven Wright comedy show Saturday. A Sunday Red Sox game in Boston that 50 Dartmouth students attended. A lecture Monday on AIDS that drew about 300 students.
Then on Tuesday, the Programming Board took a rest.
Commanding a more than $200,000 budget with a rapidly expanding membership, the Programming Board has a hand in almost every social event outside of weekend parties on Webster Avenue.
The co-leaders of the Programming Board this year, Allison Ahearn '94 and Bob Bordone '94, credit the board's growth to the opening of the Collis Center and a revamped internal structure.
Beginning last spring, the Programming Board broke into numerous small committees, each with a specific area of programming, like comedy, concert and novelty.
Ahearn said the new structure gives students much more of a "hands-on" feel. She said in the last three years there were about 15 students in the group. Now about 50 students come to the weekly Monday meetings.
Not only does the Programming Board plan its own events, it also gives funding to groups to help them put on events.
Ahearn said the function of the Programming Board is to help provide social options for all students on campus. Any event sponsored by the Programming Board must be open to the entire campus.
"We provide social programming for students of all types," she said. "If they're on their way to Webster Avenue and they want to stop by that's great, and if they want to stay in Collis all night that's fine too."
"All of the events we sponsor are student-initiated -- students went through all the details," she said. "Before the new structure, the bulk of the planning fell on our advisor."
Programming Coordinator Linda Kennedy advises the group.
Ahearn said about 15 organizations have come to the board this term for sponsorship.
Bordone said students get more of a "tangible payoff" when they plan events. He said most students spend a couple hours per week working on the Programming Board.
The growth of the board makes it easier to come up with top-notch ideas, Ahearn said.
"In the past when the board was small, there weren't as many people giving input and deciding what was a hit or a miss," she said. "So there tended to be a lot more misses."
Bordone said there is "tons more stuff" going on now than when he was a freshman.
In addition, he said the board tried to be more active in recruiting members from the incoming class.
Kennedy said the growth of the Programming Board intentionally coincided with the development of Collis.
"We knew with the opening of the new campus center there would be a lot of expectations for new programming," she said. "The board knew it better make plans and get ready."
"Part of that meant making the board bigger so we had more people to do all the work that was expected of it," she said.
Kennedy said the Programming Board is appealing to students because they do not have to be selected or elected.
"We do enough things so all sorts of people can get their teeth into something," she said. "There are lots of ways to be involved. It's exceedingly friendly and we don't put up a lot of hurdles to your involvement."
Ahearn, Bordone and Kennedy all said they try to make the Programming Board as friendly as possible; Ahearn and Bordone said they try to incorporate new members into the group very quickly.
The growth of the Programming Board has allowed it to invest more effort into putting on big "events," like Rock the Hop and the Winter Carnival Formal, Bordone said.
"It takes a lot of concentrated effort to make a big event," he said. "We couldn't do that in the past."
The Programming Board has also worked on creating "Friday Night at Collis," which replaced Friday Night Dance Club this term with several events going on at once.
Ahearn said the successful big events make students more interested in the Programming Board.
"Nothing succeeds like success," Kennedy said. "People on the Programming Board have had a lot of success this year, and they're really fired up."
Bordone said the Programming Board did not used to sponsor events on weekend nights.
"When I was a freshman, there was more of a feeling of 'let's not compete with the Greek system,'" Bordone said. "This year we've said, providing as many options as possible is great ... Even people involved in the Greek houses don't always want to" go to house parties.
Several members of the Programming Board went down to a national conference in Boston, Mass. to meet with other programming groups and to sign acts in advance, Bordone said. He said seeing the groups in advance lowers the chance of signing a bad act.
Bordone said he thinks the Programming Board can keep up its successes in the future, but he said he is worried about the renovations of Webster Hall, which will deprive the Programming Board of a major venue for its events.
He said the Programming Board may eventually run into budgetary problems if it keeps planning more and more events. He said the College may need to raise its $35 per-term student activities fee.
