What do Talib Kweli, Sean Kingston, Rahzel, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, and Kevin Little have in common? They have all performed at Bowdoin College in the past four years, they have all been paid a lot of money for those performances, and they have all been huge disappointments for almost everyone sober enough to see their concerts.
Talib might have been better if he had played for more than 15 minutes. We did pay him $30,000. Wait—say it again—15 minutes for $30,000? At two grand a minute, that is a disgusting waste of money. Things were not much better for any of the other performances, save Santigold.
Point one: You don't have to pay a lot of money to get a good band. Point two: What you should be even more worried about is the Entertainment Board. The who? Formerly known as the Campus Activities Board, this self-selecting body whose leaders admit they "do not represent a fair sample of the campus," and do not hold open meetings—that I've heard of—were in charge of bringing these bands to campus. They are also in charge of choosing the next generation of concert bringers.
The price that they pay for having this authority is simply that they must help set up the concerts (and deal with my and soon your textual lashings). Now I don't know about you guys, but if hundreds of my tuition dollars are being put towards these concerts, I'd like to have a little say in who's going to be in the shows. Whenever possible the Entertainment Board should represent the opinion of the entire campus.
The amount of money that they are allowed to spend should be significantly reduced, and there is a serious need for an entire restructuring of how the campus chooses to bring entertainment. At the very least a campus-wide vote should occur before any Ivies decisions are made. I urge you to demand more control over your entertainment. There is a lot of talent here on campus. If you only had three television channels or three books to read for the year and you were paying tens of thousands for each, would you ever allow somebody you don't know choose those for you? The Entertainment Board may be trying their best, but they are predestined for failure because of the way the body is organized.
Here is a little anecdote to illustrate my concern. Last year, the president of the Entertainment Board was in charge of organizing the Battle of the Bands. The Battle of the Bands traditionally decides the student band that plays for Ivies, so for those involved there is obviously a lot of planning, practicing and preparing that goes into it.
First of all, I think the students present at the concert should take a vote at the end of the concert to decide the winner. Okay, so they didn't do that. No big deal. I had no beef with the band that was chosen because they did a great job, but I do take issue with this individual, your President of Entertainment who did not have enough foresight to plan a sound check for that concert. Expecting a good concert without having a sound check is like expecting to write a good research paper without doing the research.
As a result, the speakers were blown out, the concert was delayed, and one of the bands didn't even get a chance to perform. Where is the most egregious overspending and under-delivering occurring on our campus? The Entertainment Board.
This group is in need of a proper sound check, please! These people don't even play instruments! If we don't want to involve the whole campus, all of the musicians on campus could choose the band that comes. One club, the Bowdoin Musical Collective—all musicians and artists welcome—could pair up with WBOR to bring the best bands for the best value to this campus. Disband the Entertainment Board; it is defunct.
Rutledge Long is a member of the Class of 2010.