Bowdoin students often trek to Colby or Bates to see their team clash with their rivals. In coming years, they may also make the trip to see their favorite bands perform.
Bowdoin's Campus Activities Board (CAB) and the student programming boards at both Bates and Colby have agreed to move forward on a plan to pool their resources and hold a joint concert, with the intention of making this "CBB concert" an annual event. Though the original idea was to schedule the first concert in this series for next semester, the schools' student planning boards decided this week to delay the inaugural event until next fall.
"The effort of planning an event on this scale proved to be more of an undertaking than initially anticipated," Colby Student Programming Chair Meaghan Fitzgerald told the Orient.
"Each school has their own way of operating which creates a few speed bumps," Bates Student Programming Board co-chairs Mike Springer and Ky Winborn wrote in an e-mail. "In the spring there are sports in each of our venues as well as differing break schedules at each school."
In November, Bowdoin's CAB put the question of whether to have the joint concert to Bowdoin students, arranging an online vote. According to rough figures given by CAB Co-Chair Sarah Scott '07, only about a quarter of students cast votes. Of those who did vote, the majority favored the idea.
One of those "yes" votes belonged to sophomore Sean Murphy, a guitarist who plays in a campus band.
"What intrigued me is that we could potentially draw a bigger act," he told the Orient. "It's something we can at least try."
The ability to attract a bigger act by using the combined resources of the three schools was the primary "pro," Megan MacLennan, CAB co-chair, cited in a November 13 e-mail to all Bowdoin students. MacLennan and Scott told the Orient that the total budget for the concert would be $90,000. Of that, $60,000 would go toward a bid for a performer, which is three times the CAB's normal budget for a concert.
With that size of a budget, MacLennan's e-mail said, the schools could afford to bid for performers such as Snoop Dogg, Ben Folds, and the band Modest Mouse. An Orient review of the Web site www.concertideas.com, which the CAB commonly uses to find performers, found a number of other musical acts that fall within the $60,000 budget, including Widespread Panic, Wyclef Jean, Third Eye Blind, String Cheese Incident, and Lil Jon.
"The biggest complaint we get is that we don't bring in bands that people know," said Scott. "This is an opportunity to get a bigger name."
Other pros listed by MacLennan's November e-mail include "Bowdoin would have increased notoriety for popular concerts" and "Students from Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin would all be able to hang out together."
The "cons" listed in the e-mail include increased ticket prices due to transportation costs (when the concert is not held at Bowdoin), limited ticket sales, liability issues that may result from incidents of drunk-driving or vandalism, and violence between students of the rival colleges.
The pros and cons laid out in the student-wide e-mail worried Bowdoin junior Steve Smith, who voted against the concert proposal.
"It's generally a bad thing when all the money issues are on the 'con' side of the list," he told the Orient, adding that transportation would likely be a "logistical nightmare."
Smith was also skeptical about the e-mail's implication that a joint concert would improve long-term relations between students of the NESCAC foes.
"Those relations will fall to pieces as soon as [the hockey teams] step on to the ice at Dayton Arena," he said.
Fitzgerald, the Colby programming chair, did not think that the schools' rivalry would be an issue at a CBB concert.
"I see no indication that there will be any fights between the schools," she said. "While school pride does tend to surface during sports events, I can't imagine that such animosity would prohibit students from seeing the benefits of...an event that one school alone could not provide."
Bowdoin junior Zach Tcheyan, a music major, was critical of the idea because he doesn't think students will want to leave campus for a concert.
"It seems that Bowdoin students are not very interested in concerts to begin with," he said.
"I don't see how having a concert off campus will make them want to go any more," he added.
Though no details have been solidified, Scott estimated that each school would be allowed to sell between 700 and 800 tickets, and that the host school might receive extra tickets. She estimated that most Bowdoin concerts draw, at most, 300 or 400 students, so they would be "giving a leeway of approximately double the normal number of people."
Bowdoin Director of Student Life Allen Delong said that on the occasion that the concert is held at Bates or Colby, the College would provide shuttle transportation, as it currently does for Bowdoin-Colby sporting events.
Delong added that he thinks the CBB concert is a "great idea."
"Talent is becoming increasingly expensive, and Brunswick is not a desirable routing destination for big acts," he said. "A collaborative venture allows three small schools to land a larger, more popular act with less financial risk."
Scott, the CAB co-chair, said that although the CBB concert idea is based on a three-year rotation, no long-term plans are set in stone. If the trial concert is a bust then the schools are under no obligation to continue it.
"We really just want to see how the first year goes," she said. "It's at least worth a shot."