With A Little Help From Their Friends

Six and a half centuries ago, John Wycliffe translated the Bible into English. One year ago, a Wyclef Jean concert was cancelled at Harvard University.

Wycliffe hoped to reform the Catholic Church. Wyclef, although he never intended to, helped spark a movement to reform another institution: the Harvard Concert Commission (HCC).

By the end of the 2005 fall, many undergraduates had grown disenchanted with the HCC. After consecutive failures to lock down concerts with Snoop Dogg and Wyclef Jean, and a subsequent official inquiry by the Undergraduate Council (UC), there was a great deal of pressure on the HCC for internal reform.

Now, a year after the Wyclef incident, the HCC says it’s made significant changes, and is preparing to make its case to undergraduates.

THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRACY

Tickets for the Wyclef concert were extremely undersold and the commission was forced to cancel the show in order to minimize losses, which were already somewhere in the range of $30,000.

To this day, no one knows exactly what went wrong. One possibility was that the HCC was unable to properly assess student interest and had picked an unpopular artist.

A proposed remedy for this dilemma was to democratize the HCC, or as a Nov. 2, 2005 Crimson staff editorial put it, to “institute direct elections of the commission.”

For the time being though, the HCC doesn’t see the need to make that change.

“We don’t believe the HCC should be democratized,” says Chair of Promotions Lauren P.S. Epstein ’07. According to her, the HCC is a student group—not a representative body.

“I think the fact that we are a small group is one of our strengths, and to democratize the HCC would change the face and the feel of it,” says G. Tyler O’Brien ’07, the HCC’s current Director.

Former HCC Director Justin H. Haan ’05 agrees, and thinks keeping the organization outside of campus electoral politics provides continuity.

“By keeping the HCC a small group, which is not subject to dramatic turnover annually in terms of its personnel has allowed it to maintain much of its institutional memory,” Haan says.

Haan, who was campus life fellow in 2005-06, and is also a Crimson editor, sees an additional danger in democratization: over-inflation of student expectations.

“If the HCC were to have popular elections, you would have people basing their candidacy on promises to bring X, Y, Z artists without necessarily being in a position to evaluate the feasibility of actually bringing such an artist,” he says.

The HCC’s production chair, Samantha H. Fink ’07, says the current group structure—wherein new members are selected by the existing group—already represents student interests.

“I feel that because of what we are and who is interested in being a part of us, we have assembled a fairly representative group,” she says.

CH-CH-CH-CHANGES

Despite this commitment to the group’s membership structure, the HCC has taken a number of recent steps to change both how they operate but how the public sees them.

“We wanted to change in order to position ourselves to better serve student interests,” says O’Brien.

In the arena of concerts, they quickly tried to turn their image around through a twist on the event formerly known as Spring Fest, renamed Yardfest, which was held last April. With help from the Dean’s Office, the HCC organized a well-attended concert by Ben Folds.

O’Brien sees the event as a turning point. “We wanted to have a draw for Yardfest, and the show with Ben Folds ended up drawing more undergraduates than any other event of its kind in Harvard’s history,” he says.

They also distributed a poll on musical genres to the student body last spring to get a better sense of what undergraduates wanted to hear.

Although these results were never made public, Epstein says that they “certainly learned a lot” from the polls, and that members of the HCC “want to do polls again, regularly.”

But Epstein is quick to point out the dilemmas inherent in polling.

“The problem with the polls are that as soon as any time passes, they’re likely to not be as relevant any more,” she says.

According to Fink, using more reputable polls from national organizations is no help, either, due to Harvard’s unique musical tastes.

“We’ve used national polls and other resources like [national media conglomerate] Clear Channel and Facebook in the past to help us in artist selection, and Harvard is an anamoly,” she says.

Another possible way to cater to Harvard’s musical tastes is the possibility of students voting on a short-list of potential artists. But that hurts the HCC’s ability to get affordable contracts with artists, according to Epstein.

“If a performing artist finds out that they’re Harvard students’ top pick, they’ll use it as leverage in contract negotiations, thinking that Harvard is rich,” she concludes.

FIXING A HOLE

So, if they won’t hold elections and they don’t trust polling, how is the HCC going to regain the trust of the student population?

In their minds, less is more. The organization has started to focus on smaller, more varied events, and gradual changes in its organizational structure.

Their main initiatives have been three new campus performance events, aesthetic upgrades like a new Web site, and a newly-conceived comp process.

Epstein praises the new events. “The introduction of Comedy for a Cause, Harvard Live, and Yardfest are an attempt at diversification of the HCC’s operations,” she says.

Comedy for a Cause—a stand-up comedy show originally intended as a one-time event in cooperation with the Earthquake Relief Coalition—was a large success last year, and the HCC decided to bring it back as an annual event.

Held again this October, the event was a complete sellout and was predicted to bring in tens of thousands of dollars in charity money. Another program, Harvard Live—which was inaugurated at the beginning of this semester—underscores a marked change in the HCC’s approach toward event planning.

Harvard Live is an educationally based program that brings in big-name performing artists to Harvard for question-and-answer and storytelling sessions at small venues on campus. The first installment featured the Barenaked Ladies.

The Harvard Live shows will address one of the HCC’s all-time enemies—budgeting—in that they’re given free of charge by performing artists who are touring in Boston, under the premise that they’re educational events. The program is also being sponsored in cooperation with Harvard’s Office for the Arts, which underwrites any charges incurred in production.

Fink says the HCC has already reached out to a number of artists—who she declined to name—for future shows.

However, she’s confident that they’ll be able to draw popular acts. “The Harvard name goes a long way in the music industry,” she adds.

With the failure of some of the recent larger shows, the HCC has moved toward a policy that does not hinge their success on bringing one large show, but instead seeks out smaller events that will still have high appeal with students.

Finally, the group is looking to focus on smaller campus venues, allowing them to hedge their bets with less risky concerts.

“We’re especially excited about the opening of the new Hilles Library in the Quad,” says Fink, “[It] has its own coffee house, which I believe has come fully equipped with its own stage and sound system.”

“We hope to use this smaller space for performances for student and local bands,” she adds.

HCC IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS

The HCC has also made an important internal change with the institution of a comp process this semester.

Previously, a written application was the only way to enter the group.

“The comp allowed us to see the amount of energy people were ready to dedicate, their work ethic, even their reliability,” says Epstein.

“I’m too busy’ is not an excuse when you’re on the HCC,” Fink adds.

Compers did various tasks related to coordinating and organizing, says Fink. “The compers were doing what the HCC members were doing for the most part,” she says.

The comp, which initially involved over 100 interested students, was recently completed and leaves the group at 26 members.

One final issue that needed immediate attention after the Wyclef mishap was that of funding.

Last fall, under the financial support of the UC, there was a delay in the transfer of funds to the HCC, and UC and HCC members agree that the funding system contributed to the eventual cancellation of the concert.

The UC’s partnership with the HCC was primarily a financial one, and with the UC’s many other obligations, the HCC’s needs were not always primary.

This year though, the HCC is under the financial oversight of the newly-created College Events Board, whose sole focus is, as their official website puts it, “building Harvard College community through campus-wide events.”

The Board is a student-run organization, separate from the UC, and it receives funding from the College administration. It was established last spring, largely in response to the debates that emerged from the Wyclef cancellation. The group also helped plan the Harvard Carnival at the beginning of this semester.

“Working this year with the College Events Board has allowed funding to be much more streamlined,” says O’Brien.

THE UC’S REVIEW: A YEAR LATER

Now that the HCC has financially realigned itself with the College Events Board and put some distance between themselves and the UC’s inquiry, those who criticized them are starting to evaluate their progress.

Ryan A. Petersen ’08, who served on the UC board that oversaw the inquiry, said of the HCC that their new funding sources have removed a lot of the previous complications that led to the Wyclef cancellation.

“They’re no longer constrained by the term bill revenue and the UC fund allocation time,” he says. “This is a lot more time the HCC can now use to prepare for events.”

Serving on the same UC board was Matthew R. Greenfield ’08, who agrees that “the HCC was probably restrained by the UC’s awkward fiscal schedule.”

Greenfield has even more praise for the HCC. “They’ve gotten a lot closer to the student body,” he says. “This is a story of huge success on the part of HCC leaders and the College Events Board.”

“They changed my mind, they really convinced me they can throw really great concert events at Harvard,” Greenfield concludes.

YOU’VE BEEN SUCH A LOVELY AUDIENCE

In the wake of all this change, it’s time for a rest, say group leaders.

“Right now, for the rest of the fall, we’re going to take a short break and re-evaluate our recent successes and what we’ve done to change, and have this ready to pass on to the next round of officers this December,” says O’Brien.

On this hiatus, they also will begin looking into their options for this spring’s Yardfest.

“The real value in a concert is bringing everyone together,” says Haan, the HCC seems to have made considerable efforts towards making that goal come true.

But whatever happens, we can’t blame Wyclef. As he sang in “Hips Don’t Lie,” “I ain’t guilty, it’s a musical transaction.”

We know Wyclef, we know.