ealinko@mavs.coloradomesa.edu

Welcome back (and to) CMU. Before we all pushed school obligations to the backs of our minds and hopped on the fun train to drunk-ville for the summer, your lovely representatives in the Associated Student Government passed a bill allocating $80,000 to bring a concert with major artists to CMU.

It was recently announced that 3OH!3 and Air Dubai would be headlining a concert during welcome week. This is where your money went students. A Criterion editorial last year noted that the $80,000 in student fees that was allocated not only exceeds ASG’s yearly budget, but they had to dip into reserve accounts to do so.  This is the same money that goes to student clubs, organizations and events for the whole year.

This seems a little overblown for a single welcome week event. Sure, we will get some spotlight, some “big-university” hoopla like CU and CSU, but at a cost I feel is a little too pricey.

Hey wait. Aren’t I a Liberal? Don’t I like spending big bucks on awesome stuff? You bet I do, but a two-hit-wonder from the 2000’s wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. I will reference a column by former KMSA General Manager Kyle Cooper published in the Criterion last year, which noted that for an artist to perform on campus, they must have a $1 million dollar insurance policy. To have something like that, you need to be a fairly big name artist.

Instead of doing away with this insane insurance liability policy and booking some motivated, talented, local artists, we book a show with a washed-out band from the lowest rung of the major-label hierarchy. Instead of saving some bucks for clubs and organizations and fun events all year, we blow a giant chunk on a flashy, big, expensive show.

This really reflects the traits of our university, which champions affordability, has one of the highest percentages of older, non-traditional students who seem rather uninterested in such fervor, and prides itself on small class sizes.

Let’s have events for the fun and crazy dorm-life kids, let’s get some strobe lights and some loud music and have a good time, but I’d like to avoid shelling out a galactic amount of money to do it.

I hope the event goes well, I hope the University is able to recuperate some of it’s investment with ticket sales to non-students, I hope this will motivate more students to come to CMU for a valuable education. However, I would prefer to stray away from the gaudy and the pretentious. This university should be celebrating the wonderful community it sits in the middle of, instead of spending big bucks to ship in some b-rate performers.