The Wildcat editorial board has major concerns with the new ASUA special events poll.
Nearly six months have passed since the Last Smash Platinum Bash concert, which lost over $1 million, and the Associated Students of the University of Arizona has the nerve to send out a poll about what other kinds of concerts should take place on campus.
Yesterday, the Wildcat reported that ASUA would ask for concert input “”in an effort to fix a reputation damaged by last semester’s disastrous Jay-Z concert.”” This new endeavor will have the opposite effect to ameliorating ASUA’s tarnished name.
The concert most certainly did not break even, and it did not sell out. What makes ASUA think that sensible students will trust the organization to put on another concert?
In the Wildcat report, ASUA executive special events coordinator Caleb Wilson focused on the importance of making students happy. “”We want students to come to shows and see bands they like,”” he said. Has this ASUA representative, along with other members of the organization, wondered if students would be happier without any more concerts in the coming years?
Most students and staff weren’t pleased about the significant damage done by the Last Smash Platinum Bash concert, and ASUA should not be so determined to spend more money on these big shows, especially so soon after such a flop.
We hope the real focus of this poll is to ask students whether or not they’d approve of future concerts rather than which performers they’d most like to see. Judging by Wilson’s further comment, “”this survey is really all about finding out what the students want and like,”” we suspect that the poll is aimed more toward concert promotion.
To further demonstrate this point, ASUA President Chris Nagata even mentioned that the special events survey will “”keep (ASUA) in check and help (ASUA) provide services that students are interested in.””
Even if concerts are really what students “”want and like”” and are “”interested in,”” why not consider what they need instead? What about what the university needs? Isn’t it the job of the Associated Students of the University of Arizona to look out for the university’s best interests?
We should be able to differentiate between what we desire and what we need. It’s not crucial for us to experience another concert on this campus, but we would benefit from a university that has fewer financial crises.
As much as we appreciate ASUA’s efforts in making the UA a more fun institution of higher learning, they should be very cautious about planning more concerts. Even if students respond positively to the survey and demand more shows, ASUA should realize that not all of these students will follow through with concert purchases. There were, after all, many empty seats at the Last Smash Platinum Bash concert.
It’s easy for survey takers to request a Taylor Swift concert be held at the UA, but many of these students may not be in a financial situation to pay for a frivolous event once the artist finally makes it out to Tucson. It’s likely these voters will have lost interest in certain performers by concert time. When it comes to performances, there are so many potential losses at hand, and we really don’t need any more of those. ASUA needs to be mindful of this before inviting another star to sing in Centennial Hall, Arizona Stadium or anywhere else on campus.
Above all else, we leave it up to the majority of students to recognize the detriments that past concerts have done to this university. Here’s to wishing everyone learned from this abominable mistake, since ASUA clearly did not.
— Editorials are determined by the opinions board, which includes Alex Dalenberg, Justyn Dillingham, Laura Donovan, Daniel Greenberg, Heather Price-Wright, Dan Sotelo and Anna Swenson.
