Last semester, Georgetown University students were sickened by both a viral outbreak and a string of seven consecutive losses by Georgetown’s football team. Adding insult to injury, Georgetown’s Program Board chose to subsidize tickets to see Top 40 bands play in Northern Virginia rather than host an on-campus concert. This semester, change has come to Georgetown … sort of.
Last Thursday, GPB sent out a campus-wide survey soliciting the opinion of Georgetown’s student body to help decide the feature performer for their Spring Kickoff Concert, to be held in McDonough Gymnasium on April 18. The e-mail survey featured 14 acts from a wide variety of music genres, including hip-hop artists Lupe Fiasco and the Roots and frat-rockers Guster and OAR. Over 2,300 students voted—just a few hundred fewer voters than the last GUSA presidential election, a testament to how much the student body cares about having an on-campus concert to call their own.
GPB should be applauded for finally giving students a say in who takes the stage this spring. However, their newly democratic process is not without flaw: Jason Mraz, who already performed on campus in GPB’s 2005 Fall Concert, was included on the ballot and currently stands as the students’ top choice. By offering as an option an artist whom current Georgetown seniors have already had a chance to see, GPB has limited the diversity of concerts it could offer students.
Despite this blunder, GPB has the right idea. While getting students involved early on in the concert planning process is a good start, GPB must also work with student groups who have intimate knowledge of how to run successful concerts. They should team up with WGTB Radio to run the concert’s sound systems and reach out to Georgetown stage master Ted Parker, who has access to a set of new, high-quality speakers. Since McDonough gymnasium is infamous for its poor lighting and abysmal acoustics, GPB will need all the help it can get to provide whatever artist it eventually books with adequate performing conditions.
Just because GPB holds the purse strings to a $70,000 annual concert budget does not mean the event belongs only to the board itself. On-campus concerts provide a rare opportunity for Georgetown students to celebrate as one community. By partially opening up the artist selection process to the student body, GPB is on the right track toward making this happen. Now they must solicit the aid of different groups on campus in planning and running the event.
