Working in Concert

Where’s Snoop?”—that was the question on everybody’s mind last spring after the Harvard Concert Commission’s (HCC) planned Snoop Dogg concert hit a fatal snag.

As the HCC plans a November concert, what most students don’t understand is that in the past the HCC has managed to pull off successful shows despite the fact that the deck has been stacked against it.

On a socially fragmented campus desperately in need of some unity, campus concerts can play an important role as the centerpiece of campus-wide events. Concerts are clearly popular among students—when Busta Rhymes came in 2004, almost 3,000 students attended, and over 4,600 people attended Bob Dylan’s concert last fall. Large draws can bring us together and enrich our college life in a way that few others events can.

But before we can consistently have better concerts, we have to put our money where our mouths are by giving the HCC a larger and more permanent budget and by being more realistic with our expectations..

The first practical pitfall is that the HCC’s purse is controlled by the Undergraduate Council (UC), which can’t allocate funds for future academic years giving the HCC almost no time to plan a concert. This year, funds for a fall concert were not allocated until late August, giving the HCC just two months. According to HCC Chair Jack P. McCambridge ’06, ideally, the HCC should have six months to plan and stage an event.

This short time frame does not plague other schools. Howie Cusack, president of Pretty Polly Productions, which helps 95 colleges in the area including Harvard put on concerts, says that about 90 percent of the colleges he works with have a fixed budget. With the extra lead time afforded by a fixed budget, colleges can secure better acts and make adjustments when complications arise.

With such little time, the margin for error is so thin that “it’s like being on a tight rope and hoping you don’t trip,” says McCambridge. That’s exactly what happened with Snoop—the Boston Police Department unexpectedly demanded that Harvard hire extra police officers for the show, and the HCC simply didn’t have the money or the time to save the event.

One solution is to create an independent student programming board with its own budget taken out of the student activities fee, like at Penn or Tufts. It works because funds are allocated by students who are focused on putting on campus events and understand the costs involved, not the student government. Although the UC rejected this option last year, it should reexamine it.

Alternatively, the UC could have a permanent concert allocation. The UC’s policy of not allocating for future councils makes no sense for recurring events like concerts. Debating and allocating the money as if there is no precedent for having concerts creates unnecessary obstacles. While the UC ponders having an independent campus events board, it should at the very least give the HCC a permanent budget.

College concerts are much more expensive than other concerts because colleges don’t already have equipment and staff for the show nor the bargaining ability of big venues, which are owned by a handful of companies with tremendous market power. Everything from security to the artists to production is far more expensive. Cusack says that “if Harvard wants to get an artist and they only have one date, Harvard doesn’t have a lot of leverage. Once the artist knows they want him, the artist will squeeze them.”

And costs are higher at Harvard because our only available venues are athletics facilities. At the Gordon Track, a stage has to be built overnight complete with ramps, lighting, and sound equipment. Tack on a variety of other expenses and concerts turn out to be more expensive than one would expect—McCambridge said the HCC needs at least $30,000 budgeted to start planning a concert. That’s why most colleges’ concerts are highly subsidized.

But at Harvard, nobody wants to pay for the quality acts that students want to see. The College and the University don’t want to cough up money (although the President’s Office did give $20,000 to make the Busta Rhymes concert free). The UC is locked into giving 67 percent of its budget to student groups, leaving it cash strapped when it gives $30,000 to the HCC. And students don’t want a higher activities fee as evidenced by the contentious fee hike last year.

That leaves the HCC charging high ticket prices for lesser acts. Until the HCC is given more money, students need to go into concerts with slightly lower expectations. Cusack says that at this point, Harvard “just doesn’t have the money to get the big names.”

The best way to fix this problem is to allocate more time and money for campus-wide events. In the meantime, if you care about concerts you should ask UC candidates how much they will give the HCC before you decide your vote. The Killers, The Beastie Boys, John Mayer, and Wyclef Jean—all these top artists on the UC’s wish list could come to Harvard in the next few years. But if that’s what we want, we’ve got to take the initiative.

Adam M. Guren ’08, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Eliot House.