According to an article titled "SA Entertainment balances spending, pays $267,000 for Fall Fest" (Nov. 30, 2005), it is claimed that SA has spent about half of their entertainment budget in the fall semester, 30 percent of which was on Fall Fest. Of the money spent on the fest, $162,000 was spent on talent costs of the Kanye West tour. Having half of their entertainment budget left for spring semester, it would seem reasonable that SA spend around 30 percent of that budget on Spring Fest.
However, the talent costs of this year's Spring Fest seem to be coming much lower. In the article "Our Lady Peace likely for Spring Fest" (March 29), it is stated that Our Lady Peace's cost is $40,000 and Robert Randolph and the Family Band is set to cost $35,000. The total of these two bands is less than half of the cost of the Kanye tour, yet Yador says there is only around $35,000 left to spend on another band, still leaving over $50,000 talent cost difference.
In the Nov. 30 article, Dela Yador said there is "no pressure to spend a certain amount of money on fest performers based on what they have left in the coffers. 'It's always what's the best bang for the buck.' " Noting the disappointment of many students in the chosen acts (not mine), it seems that Yador did not choose "the best bang for the buck." Perhaps spending the same amount of money on fest talent would have resulted in pleasing more students and having better (or more) musical acts for this year's Spring Fest.
Examples of what other colleges have done for this spring include R.I.T. bringing in Taking Back Sunday; the MTVU Campus Invasion Tour with Motion City Soundtrack as headliners; Fall Out Boy is playing shows for the University of Southern California, the University of Denver and the University of Illinois at Chicago (coincidentally Fall Out Boy will be playing in Buffalo the same night as Spring Fest), and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities is bringing in Death Cab for Cutie with Franz Ferdinand.
I do not know the costs of these tours, however they do show that a more crowd-pleasing rock concert is possible.
