Campus Events | News | Student Union
Funding and act approved, but CPC holds off comedy announcement
While the Campus Programming Council’s (CPC) fall comedy show has taken place for the past two years on the first Friday of classes, the group has yet to announce this semester’s artist. In addition, the venue has not been confirmed, and the show has not yet been scheduled.
Student Union representatives confirmed that funding and the artist have been approved, though CPC co-presidents senior J.R. Davis and junior Peter Bergman declined to confirm or provide details.
“We approved an artist for this semester, so I’m not sure exactly why they haven’t released that information,” senior Ammar Karimjee, Student Union vice president of finance, said. “From our end, there is a comedy event happening this semester. We know who it is; we know how much it costs, but we don’t want to release information before CPC is ready to. But we know that there is going to be a comedy event this semester, unless something changed since the last time I talked to them.”
Both Davis and Bergman would only say that the artist, date and location would be announced “very soon,” potentially at an upcoming Thursday Happy Hour.
“I do understand that it’s typically hosted on First Friday, but because of the administration wanting to have it much later than it had been previously, we thought it would be better to have it later in the semester,” Davis said.
When asked which administrators vied for postponing the event and why, Bergman declined to respond, except to say, “I’m not sure if it’s appropriate or not.”
Karimjee said the event was likely postponed because of scheduling issues.
“I don’t want it to sound like we haven’t talked to CPC about this—we really have. There were a number of reasons that it was postponed, and I don’t know all of them. But one of them was just timing, and stuff was not… all ready in time to be able to happen when they wanted it to happen. That’s one of the main reasons it was postponed,” Karimjee said.
Bill Larson, operations manager of Edison Theatre, agreed that planning issues are likely to blame for the delay.
“They had [Edison Theatre] reserved the First Friday…And then a couple of weeks before that, they called and said that they couldn’t use us anymore. I’m guessing it’s because the artist cancelled or they had an artist issue,” Larson said.
Since the theater was completely booked for this semester, Larson is now in conversation with CPC about a date in February.
“They came to me and said, ‘What do you guys have available at the beginning of next semester?’ And so, I just emailed them, it might have been even Thursday or Friday of last week, and said, all I can offer at this point is February the 12th, I think it’s like a Tuesday night or something. And they said, ‘Well, if you can hold it for now, we’ll see if that can work out for us.’ But unfortunately, that’s all that we could offer,” he said.
As of Sunday night, the CPC page of the Student Union website showed only $1,000 worth of funding allocated for the 2012-13 school year.
According to Davis, this discrepancy is due to technological complications last semester in uploading correct budget information.
A more complete and accurate record of funding requested for programming can be found in SU’s General Budget. It shows $65,000 requested for this year’s fall comedy talent and another $30,000 for a spring show. According to Karimjee, the actual amount funded for talent for the two shows is $62,000.
Note: This article originally stated that CPC was allocated $65,000 and $30,000 for its fall and spring comedy shows, respectively, but that was actually the amount requested. Student Life apologizes for the error.