Last week, tickets for Programming Board's spring concert went on sale in Collis at 12 p.m., and by 1 p.m. the Three 6 Mafia show was sold out. The crowd dispersed, and students left Collis both ticketless and disappointed. Now we've all been disappointed, at one point or another, with the programs Programming Board funds, but surely this is the last straw.
The concert next week is being held in Alumni Hall, a venue with a fire capacity of 475 people. I'm no mathematician, but my calculator tells me that means only a handful more than a tenth of the student body will be able to see this year's spring concert. If Programming Board wishes to continue the spring concert tradition, it needs to make future concerts available to more students.
Over the course of this academic year, Programming Board brought us the thrills of Bingo Night, co-sponsored a Harry and the Potters concert and welcomed students back to campus this fall with a Lawn Party full of Sandy Candy and spray-on tattoos . It's as if Programming Board is run by a tag-team duo of my grandmother and Preston Waters, that adorable kid in "Blank Check."
These events, while indeed a squandering of the dwindling pile of cash locked away in the Dartmouth coffers, don't bother me all that much. As the great Larry David would say, they "aren't my cup of tea," but I presume some of us, somewhere on this wide and diverse campus of ours, enjoy their share of Sandy Candy. And if Dartmouth has enough student interest to start a club Quidditch team, then paying two muggles dressed as wizards to come rock out in Fuel might gather a crowd.
But with student scalpers now selling Three 6 Mafia tickets for over $100 and a large portion of the student body unable to attend the show, I think it's safe to say that Programming Board has really dropped the ball this time. Setting aside Programming Board's contentious choice of artist and decision to start selling tickets while people had class, it is absolutely absurd that the one "big name" concert all year should be available to so few students.
Programming Board is directly funded by the Undergraduate Finance Committee, the budget of which is composed of student activity fees -- that $75 of pocket change every student pays along with his or her tuition. Almost 30 percent of Programming Board's concert budget (read: our activity fees) goes to putting on this spring concert -- don't you think all students who are interested in attending should be able to do just that?
The difficulty with organizing concerts for Dartmouth is twofold: one, the College is incredibly isolated, and two, we don't have an ideal concert hall. Act like the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Kanye West can't work Hanover, New Hampshire into their world tour schedules very easily. Nevertheless, there are some great bands that are willing to make the trek into the New England wilderness. As for the venue dilemma, Leede Arena and Leverone Field House have proved accommodating for large crowds, but limited in their availability. Alumni Hall, as we have learned from this year's concert fiasco, is far too small to hold a campus-wide spring concert.
The solution? Bring our spring concert outside. While the town council has previously nixed the idea of a concert on the Green, a stage could be set up at any number of other outdoor locations -- at the end of Webster Avenue near Epsilon Kappa Theta or in the parking lot behind Mass Row -- so that everyone who wants to attend the concert can do so. While outdoor concerts are weather-dependent, other New England schools with the similarly transient weather patterns manage to pull off outdoor concerts. And I think we can agree that the benefits of holding the concert outdoors outweigh the risk of a thunderstorm raining on our parade.
I didn't come to Dartmouth so I could see a slew of big-name musicians. But when Programming Board uses our activity fees to bring a group like Three 6 Mafia to campus, I find it absurd that a majority of interested students should be turned away at the door. The only solution, then, is to book future spring concerts at a different venue. With a spring as gorgeous as Hanover's, let's bring the party outdoors.
