Once upon a time, Marquette students looked forward to attending the annual spring concert.
That’s the story we younger generations of students have been told, but for the past few years, this hasn’t been particularly true. The majority of students have not been attending the spring concert in years past. Instead, they express their disapproval of the featured band and continue on with their lives.
But fear not students, your passionate complaints have been heard! Next year there will not be an unpopular musician playing at the spring concert, because there will not be a spring concert.
Last week, the Marquette Student Government passed a budget for next year that eliminates the Major Events Commission, namely, the spring concert. The decision was made in order to save money in response to low concert attendance and disinterest among students.
We understand that MUSG has a tight budget and can only dedicate a certain amount of funds to booking a concert and it is no surprise that the more popular the musician is, the more expensive it is to book them. But it appears that MUSG looked at the simplest approach of eliminating the concert rather than take a practical approach to improve it.
It’s not like the past few concerts have been unsuccessful because Marquette students hate music — we just don’t like the musicians being chosen for the spring
concert.
In its defense, MUSG did survey students earlier in the year to see which band they were most interested in seeing. However, all of the bands on the list were rather unpopular, in our opinion; Hellogoodbye just happened to be the least unpopular selection. No one wants to spend money on a band they don’t even listen to, which might be the primary reason not even half of the tickets were sold for this year’s concert. This lack of ticket sales was a major cause for the budget cut because it resulted in MUSG spending more money than they got back in revenue.
We at the Tribune believe that saving money that was only being wasted is a great idea, but we would really enjoy having an on-campus concert with a generally appreciated artist. Concerts are a normal part of college life, and we’d like to keep it that way.
Two years ago, UW-Milwaukee had KiD CuDi at its annual concert at the Marcus Amphitheater whereas Marquette had Sara Bareilles in the AMU Ballrooms. This year we had Hellogoodbye — they had Lupe Fiasco. Ask virtually any college student which school’s concert they would go to, and we’re pretty sure it wouldn’t be Marquette’s.
If other schools are able to bring in popular entertainment, there must be some way Marquette can too. What about the idea of having a concert every other year instead of annually? That way, MUSG could have double the funding to dedicate to booking an artist that students would actually pay to see. Another suggestion would be partnering with The Rave to book and host a concert. If that were possible, we would have a cooler venue than the AMU and make the event more profitable by opening it up to non-Marquette students.
No one wants to see a band that used to be cool, but that doesn’t mean people don’t want to go to a concert. So let’s focus on other ways to make the concert successful rather than disregarding it altogether. We would love to see MUSG revisit its decision to cut the Major Events Commission. We understand that this may not be possible for next year, but it should definitively be reevaluated in the near future.
We shouldn’t take this fun opportunity away from incoming students because the past two years have had lackluster turnouts. We’re smart kids that go to a great school, so let’s put our heads together and find a way to bring quality entertainment to campus.