Student survey helps select Common as spring concert
Thursday, March 13, 2008, 19:16 EST
Article Tools
Photo courtesy of Concerts Committee
Concerts Committee selected hip-hop artist Common to be the spring concert. The concert will be on April 3 at 8:30 p.m. Exterior doors open at 7:30 p.m. and concert hall doors open at 8 p.m.
News
Between Fall 2007 and Feb. 18, BUPD gave out 3,091 parking tickets -- 1,129 were to commuters, 818 to residents, 387 to Greek residents, 410 to village residents and 362 were faculty and staff tickets.
These facts, along with more, were shared as Vice President of Operations Mike Gardner and Assistant Police Chief Andy Ryan held a parking forum on Feb. 28 at Atherton Union. Spring Sports Spectacular will be having two give-back nights near the end of March, it was announced at the March 5 SGA assembly meeting.
The annual 12-hour athletic event supporting Special Olympics Indiana will have a portion of the dining money spent on specific nights donated to the philanthropic event. The first give-back night will be March 20 at Mongolian Barbeque from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., and the second on March 24 at Bazbeaux Pizza. Terrance Hayes writes poems about being a young black boy or man, he said. While his theme stays the same, Hayes claimed one factor progresses among his first, second and third books.
"The poems get more and more strange," Hayes said. A large number of sorority women from all houses and grades were fortunate enough to hear Mari Ann Callais, Ph.D. speak on March 4. The topic of the event was “From Ritual to Reality,” and it was obvious that every sorority member in the room took to Callais’ message because of her unique methods of presentation.
Callais spoke of doing the best every Greek brother and sister can do to live the true meaning behind Greek rituals, objects and letters. In a large display of his effects on popular culture, Michael Pollan spoke to two crowds on March 3, one in the Reilly Room and one in a Gallahue lecture hall via closed-circuit television.
Both locations were filled to the limits of their fire codes due to the fact that people from all over the state had come to hear Pollan’s thoughts on "The New York Times" and the "Washington Post" best-seller “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” Judging by the performances at Freshman Skits on the evening of Feb. 29, you might have thought the theme had something to do with ribbon dancing. The annual event, organized by Blue Key, gives the new members of every Greek house a chance to entertain.
Hosts Clark Taylor and Mackenzie Murnane, both seniors, presented the show as each new pledge class performed a 10-minute skit for a panel of judges and an audience full of students in the Health and Recreation Complex (HRC). Professor Aurelian Craiutu described the roots of democracy and the problems it has faced to an attentive crowd in the Reilly Room on Feb. 27.
Craiutu is an associate professor in the department of political science at Indiana University and said the subject of the lecture, “Dilemmas of Democracy,” held a very strong personal element for him.
While Concerts Committee co-chair Chris Neumann said it is “by no means complete,” the process this time in choosing the band is based on trying to receive as much student input as possible.
Student feedback came from five-question surveys handed out at the OK Go concert in the fall (2007) and at SGA meetings.
“From the concert, we ended up getting probably 150-200 responses, SGA was another 100 on top of that,” Neumann said. “We also put a notice in the [Butler] News Digest that people could e-mail me their thoughts, specific acts and genres they wanted to see, and we got another about 60 responses through that.”
Neumann explained that this helped choose a genre rather than getting stuck on just the college bands. Common was chosen by a significant number of students specifically requesting him.
After receiving student feedback, choosing the artist comes down to availability and a budget.
“A lot of it, really what it comes down to, is the availability of the artist,” Ben Fuelberth, Concerts Committee co-chair, said. “We are extremely lucky as a campus to have the excellent facility that we have in Clowes hall. You are going to find some of the best people in the business over there that are extremely good at what they do, so we are extremely lucky to have a venue like that on campus.
“Common was at the top of our list fall semester of last year [Fall 2006] and then it didn’t work out.” Fuelberth said. “We couldn’t get dates at Clowes that were open for us to use, and he didn’t have any dates that just lined up. This time it worked out and it was actually a really easy process.”
Some other artists that students requested included Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift, Sara Bareilles, Augustana, Colbie Caillat and KT Tunstall. But the main reasons for eliminating many of these artists, as Neumann explained, is the price and as mentioned before -- their availability.
Specifically in the case of Taylor Swift, Neumann said, “Taylor Swift is blowing up huge right now; she’s booked like every day for the next three months. So [it was] really hard to get some of these acts.”
In the end, Neumann said that with Common, it was a “win-win” situation with the price and timing being right.
The process in selecting a band actually takes quite some time. “We started trying to book this show probably in November [2007],” Fuelberth said. They took a week off after the OK Go concert, and then started sending out the surveys.
Both Neumann and Fuelberth agreed that so far response has been great for this concert. Neumann said that it comes down to selecting an artist that is going to be best for “Butler as a whole.”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen to concerts in the future,” Fuelberth said. “But I would think that surveying the student body is probably going to be extremely important.”
The last hip-hop artist to visit Butler was in March 2004 when The Roots came. Howie Day was scheduled to join them for that concert but due to a family emergency he canceled (The Roots still performed) and came back to play in April for Spring Exam Jam.
An opening act has not been selected yet, and might not be at all.
“We’re contemplating the idea of not having an opening act due to the fact that it is a Thursday night and will be starting a little bit later,” Fuelberth said. “From our stand point, from a financial stand point and from a time stand point, because Clowes Hall does have a curfew, just makes a whole lot of sense.”
Due to this week being spring break, ticket sales were pushed off until after. Both Fuelberth and Neumann both said they did not want to put tickets on sale this week due to mid-term exams and the “one-track mind” students would have about spring break.
Tickets for students and the Butler community go on sale the Monday after spring break (March 17) as soon as the box office opens at 10 a.m.
They are $5 per student (any area – first come, first serve) per Butler ID. Each student can get two tickets per ID, and two ID’s per student (so a maximum of four tickets per student). Ticket prices for the Butler community (faculty and staff) are the same as student prices.
Ticket sales for the public go on sale two days later on March 19. Prices are $25 for floor tickets and $15 for any upper level seats.