The face of UB's Spring and Fall Fests may be about to change, according to SA officials, but this year's Spring Fest will go on as usual now that SA has booked acts for the show.
"The talent has been confirmed, and the show is set for Friday, April 23," said Maggie Hausbeck, director of SA Entertainment, the branch of SA that coordinates the Spring Fest and Fall Fest events.
Though Hausbeck and SA Treasurer Anthony Burgio declined to confirm the acts, according to www.pollstar.com, MTV's Campus Invasion will be hitting UB the same evening Spring Fest is scheduled for, with artists Hoobastank, Ima Robot and Lostprophets.
Burgio said there are plans in the works to make the event more inclusive for a wide range of students than past Spring Fests and Fall Fests have been.
"This Spring Fest is more for the college crowd, versus the mainstream crowd," Burgio said. "We want to give this a lot more of a homecoming, carnival-type feel. It's probably the closest you're going to get...in the absence of a winning football team."
A survey appeared this week on the SA Web site inquiring as to whether students want major alterations to the SA Fest style. According to Hausbeck, the survey will be used to gauge interest for coming years.
"We put up the survey to get a sample of what people are thinking or feeling in general in terms of fests," she said. "Spring Fest and Fall Fest have taken on such a life of their own in the past few years. Before we could make any changes to what people are used to, we had to put out the survey."
The first question asked of participants if they would prefer a full day of activities with smaller music performances to the typical concert performances by national recording artists.
The second question - "Would you pay $5 to go to Spring/Fall Fest if talent was a 'big name' artist?" - is not applicable to this year's concert, Hausbeck said, but will be considered in the future based on student response.
"We're definitely not charging for Spring Fest this year," she said.
Hausbeck did say that due to Fall Fest's large-scale performances, including Godsmack, Nas and Lil' Kim, there is now a comparatively smaller amount of money in the budget for Spring Fest 2004.
"What we really wanted to do was kick off the year with a really big show," she said. "Spring Fest will definitely be smaller than what students saw at Fall Fest."
Burgio said the $5 charge could be what some students want in order to get specific big-name acts. Though SA was able to negotiate several thousand dollars off their Fest contracts this year, he said, the budget still couldn't accommodate multiple megastars at one time.
"You're not going to be able to do two or three huge shows like that in a year," he said.
Hausbeck said SA plans to send a mass e-mail to the entire university in the coming days informing students of the survey.
According to Hausbeck, more and more colleges and universities are turning to multifaceted, all-day events that focus less on major concert names, and SA Entertainment wants to know if they should follow suit based on a general consensus.
"The really big argument against it is that it would be a huge deviation," she said. "It's not a decision that could be made in a vacuum without student input."
She said SA has used similar fest surveys in the past, and changes will not be carried out without student approval.
This is the first year SA turned over entertainment duties exclusively to the newly created SA Entertainment division, following a struggle with Sub-Board I, Inc. over entertainment responsibilities on campus.
"A lot of people are grilling us for taking on SA Entertainment. We want to go out there and show people we have the biggest fests," Burgio said. "(This year) was kind of a coming out party for SA Entertainment."
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
