Replace pro bands with student ones

The Foreign Exchange: The U.S. education system works, mostly

Now that Delaware and Tennessee have been awarded the first grants from the federal Race to the Top Fund, education reform, and the corresponding assumption that American schools are abysmal, is back in the news.

The Foreign Exchange: United States harmed by death of the ‘job well done’

Friends, take a moment to look around you. Scrutinize your surroundings: the buildings, the objects, and most importantly, the people. In almost every case, you will see evidence of a scourge that, like some Gothic horror, is gradually spreading its unsightly tendrils across America, turning the landscape bleak and gray.

The Foreign Exchange

Replace pro bands with student ones

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Benjamin Ziomek

Columnist

April 30, 2010

It's old news that the Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC) is hurting for money: The WBOR concert has been canceled for somewhat dubious reasons and clubs on the whole are having their budgets slashed. Clubs are responding by inflating requests for funding, creating a vicious cycle that will only result in the poor allocation of money. And yet, the Entertainment Board (E-Board) is still bringing three acts to Ivies. Granted, it's too late for any of this to be changed, but clubs have been hurting for funds since before the beginning of the year. Considering the huge wellspring of musical talent at Bowdoin, it seems ridiculous that we should use so much money to bring in three artists when we could make use of local talent, thus saving money and building interest in local bands.

I'm not suggesting, as an innocent first year who has yet to experience the glory that is Ivies, that we cancel the concert. But while I'm sure listening to Passion Pit, Reel Big Fish and The Cool Kids is going to be fantastic, I don't think three supposed "big names" are exactly necessary for Ivies, or any event, for that matter, to be a success. Indeed, it seems almost no one I've spoken has heard of Reel Big Fish or The Cool Kids before the E-Board announced who was coming, and Passion Pit is far from the hottest thing around campus. Thus, it seems that their so-called popularity is not going to be the thing that draws students to Whittier Field on Saturday.

Instead of paying for three outside bands and exacerbating the funding crunch in the SAFC, why not just hire one mid-level band like Passion Pit and fill the rest of the concert with student bands? The Battle of the Bands to decide which band would open for the three visiting acts drew a lot of interest and proved, if there was ever any doubt, that Bowdoin students flock to student music performances as readily as they do to dance and theater shows

Booking student instead of professional bands would also give more opportunities to student bands on campus. Save for the Battle of the Bands, I can hardly remember hearing about events that featured any local bands except Milkman's Union and Teratoma. I've seen them perform, and they're great fun, but getting more diversity in student performances would be great. I've heard the members and fans of other bands expressing their displeasure at how few opportunities there are for acts not sponsored by the College to get attention at Bowdoin. Many students, myself included, don't even know how many student bands there are at the College, let alone where to see them perform using a sound system less terrible than those in the College Houses. Allowing more bands to play at Ivies could be just the spark the music scene needs to allow popular music at Bowdoin to flourish into a more open and dynamic scene.

Instead of having one winner at the Battle of the Bands, why not give a handful of acts the chance to perform at Ivies? It seems everyone wins. The E-Board and SAFC would collectively save money, allowing other clubs to do more, and make more realistic projections for what they need, secure in the knowledge that their funding requests won't get slashed indiscriminately. Perhaps if only Passion Pit had been booked, the WBOR concert could still have gone through, the fun would have been spread out to more than just one Saturday evening, and Ivies might still be happening on the Quad.

And to top it off, from what I've heard, recent Ivies Weekends haven't been great successes, even when they've featured the most expensive professional performers. As we saw with the WBOR concert, when outsiders are contracted to come and perform, problems happen—frequently. Even if the bands don't cancel, their sound might just not work or there might be delays (as with Deerhunter earlier in the year). Student bands would have more time to prepare than the professionals do. All in all, having more students perform just seems like a smart decision: It's cheaper, easier, more efficient, and really, are you going to get less pumped seeing your friends on stage than you would watching a band you just learned about?

Comments are permanently closed.