Emulate CS40 when planning a campus-wide event
For those of you who didn’t attend WUStock on Saturday, the atmosphere for headlining band Matt & Kim’s concert was electric. The crowd was engaged, the band was engaged and the South 40 became the place to spend Saturday afternoon. The Congress of the South 40 should be applauded for its planning and execution of the event.
We hope that Team 31 takes a page out of CS40’s book. The Congress was able to work with a booking agent to compile a list of potential bands that went to a student vote. The student body voted for Matt & Kim, writers of the song “Daylight,” and CS40 booked the duo and ran the event for $20,000.
We believe that W.I.L.D. would be much better served if it included more student involvement and provided more transparency when selecting the concert’s lineup. Taking these measures would eliminate criticisms of band selection by the small group of students involved in Team 31 and would add incentive to Team 31 executives to select artists that a plurality of students enjoy.
The recent student experience shows that this change in operating policy is needed. Student reactions to this spring’s headliner Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros have been largely positive; reactions over the selection of Method Man & Redman last fall were often negative. Students generally enjoy the W.I.L.D. experience regardless of the artist, but giving the student body a chance to select its ideal group could boost the overall value of the concert that much more.
We believe that if Team 31 sent out a survey similar to that of CS40 in order to determine what groups (or what type of music) most students wanted to see, attendance and enthusiasm for the concert would increase, and the number of intoxicated students at W.I.L.D. may even decrease. We think that for events such as W.I.L.D., which are designed to entertain students and distract them from the difficulty of school, those very students should be much more involved.
WUStock was an incredible event, and we believe that the student involvement CS40 included was directly responsible for that. We got to see a band that a majority of us were interested in seeing. We think that W.I.L.D. could be much better served if Team 31 followed CS40’s example and tried to get students more involved in the future.
While I can agree WUStock was a success, I think you are missing the point when comparing it to WILD. Not only is the budget significantly different, there is so much more than needs to be taken into account for wild. Think about it- they provide food, drinks, security, events other than the concert itself and still manage to do this for 3x as many students as WUStock. The two events are completely different. Plus, even if a survey was sent out, plenty of student would still be dissatisfied, and Team 31 would still have to deal with complaints expressed in this editorial. Finally, since when is StudLife a forum for bashing other student groups? Until you have worked with Team 31 on a significant level, I think you shouldn’t complain about how well they do their job.
While I do agree that WUStock would’ve been improved by collaborating with other student groups on campus, to state that it wasn’t a success is false. Those of us who showed up to Matt and Kim really enjoyed the concert, it actually WAS a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Also, have you forgotten how Matt and Kim was even chosen to perform at WUStock? We VOTED in a poll, Matt and Kim against five other bands, a point that the W.I.L.D executive board may look into in the future. Although it may be exciting to “reveal” who will be playing Fall/Spring W.I.L.D in a huge shebang, I believe that more students on campus would be satisfied if we got more say in the matter.
Thus, here is my suggestion. Instead of having THREE concerts every year (WUStock, Fall and Spring Wild), why not just have two? WUStock in the Fall and W.I.L.D in the Spring!
I completely agree with this idea. Unfortunately, Team 31 insists on holding it twice a year. If WILD was held once a year, we could use the saved money to get a much larger artist.
LOVE THIS IDEA. Let Team 31 pool all of their money to bring in a HUGE name!
Is this serious? Compared to the last 2 years, this WUStock was incredibly lacking. What happened to the hamster balls, the mechanical bull? I assumed that CS40 spent a lot of money on Matt and Kim, but to say that the “South 40 became the place to spend Saturday afternoon” is a joke. Prior to 4:45, nobody was on the Swamp. If CS40 wanted to make WUStock a success, other student groups would have been involved, there would have been more activities, and a greater number of students would have shown up to enjoy the event for more than just Matt and Kim. Compared to CS40 events of the past few years, this WUStock was a huge disappointment.
Also, why the need to bash Team 31? Are you saying that a white, hipster majority (right…) of WashU should always be heard and the same genre of music should always appear on campus for every concert? –”We got to see a band that a majority of us were interested in seeing”–is this based on a survey? The people involved in Team 31 and CS40 each get the biggest say in who comes, so the headliner choices are a reflection of those individuals that get involved in each respective group. Did you even interview Team 31 about their selection process? Fair and balanced reporting?
Studlife, you continue to disappoint me. I will be surprised when I see a fair and well-constructed editorial printed in the paper. Under the leadership of Erin Fults and Sam Guzik there was quality writing in StudLife. Now the writing–including in the editorials–sounds childish and some of it is worse than my high school newspaper. Over the past year I have seen this paper become more and more of a joke, and it seems like the StudLife staff is just a gang of friends throwing together some information. Can we please not have a drunk bingo on the W.I.L.D. issue this semester when prospective students are visiting?
I challenge the new Editor in Chief Michelle Merlin to work to make this paper a more respected news source and forum on campus.