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We are only $20,000 away from this
Grant D’Avino keeps you up to date!
The University Senate passed a smoking ban! As it stands, smoking will be prohibited within a 20-foot bubble around all buildings. The old, and loosely enforced, ban, as per New York state law, of 20 feet only applied to residence halls. Ashtrays or some other type of cigarette receptacle will be placed at the edge of the new 20-foot perimeters, along with information about quitting smoking.
The council then discussed a resolution to create centralized publication racks in Lerner. The logic behind the racks is that they would provide publicity for publications and reduce waste by cutting down on the number of publications that are thrown away. Currently, publications are forced to haphazardly distribute in residence halls, around Lerner, and in various academic buildings, and hope against hope that someone will pick up the magazine or journal that they happened to stumble across.
The funding for the new racks in Lerner would come from Lerner itself, and building representatives have already pledged to pay. Three suggested locations for the publication racks were the current location of the New York Times racks, the piano lounge, and that awkward nook near the new advising center. One council member noted that “it’s not going to be fixed by one publication rack. That would have to be pretty epic.” Given that observation, council members named the lobbies of John Jay, Hamilton, and the Butler lounge, as other possible rack locations. However, funding for those locations has not been pledged, so there was little discussion about them. The council did not vote on the resolution.
Bacchanal then gave a presentation. Or, more precisely, Bacchanal asked CCSC for money. Bacchanal has requested that CCSC, along with the other three undergraduate councils, contribute $20,000 to improve the spring concert. “We’re trying to make the spring concert as awesome as possible,” one Bacchanalian said. The concert is expensive: “1.5 Wiz Khalifas equals one stage.” The thrust of the presentation was that while Bacchanal has been a great event in years past, the additional money would allow for higher quality performers, and a higher quality concert. Comparisons were made to the spring events at Penn and Brown that are known to draw students from nearby schools because they are so awesome. As it stands, the group has roughly $60,000 to $70,000 to spend on artists, and they may begin negotiations for artists as soon as this week.
When asked why the funding could not be generated with ticket revenues, Bacchanal reps claimed it was impossible. Either they would need to ask students to pay up front (like, now) based on the promise that they could secure the concert of the students’ dreams. Or, they would need to secure an artist at a certain price and make a similarly unfounded promise that they could raise the money through ticket sales. Finally, given that the concert is held on the steps, tickets would mean a high level lockdown by campus security so that those coming in and out of the gates could be assured to be ticket holders. In discussing the sizable donation, CCSC members raised concerns about oversight, the short time frame in which to make a decision (Bacchanal requested a decision by Wednesday), the lack of details provided by Bacchanal, and the other expenditures the council would forego in making the contribution. The council will vote online sometime in the coming days or weeks, and the results of that vote will be made public.
The meeting ended with a vote for the co-chairs of Glass House Rocks. Explaining the event to 2014 representatives, one council member bluntly explained its goal: “Turn it [Lerner] into the student center it was supposed to be, but never really became.”
Image via Wikimedia Commons
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13 Comments
@daddy long legs I feel that an exception should be made for cloves. They smell so nice! (and aren’t manufactured by vicious American tobacco corporations
@Anonymous Just get small acts like Chiddy Bang, it will be just as much fun, but much cheaper. No one knew the lyrics to the Of Montreal songs anyway.
@Everybody, shut up. Let’s get Missy Elliot this year.
@Distribution Racks Do you know how long they’ve been discussing this idea? At least SEVEN years. What has caused the idea to fall through?
– Groups not coordinating with each other
– Gr0ups jockeying for the top-position on the rack
– Groups getting their own distribution rack (I’m looking at you, CPR)
– The fact that most publications only publish at the end of each semester
– Housing requires permission from Facilities. Facilities requires permission from Housing
– Figuring out who’d actually “own” the rack and take responsibility for it
– And of course, Money
While in the meantime, they allow outside publications (NY Times, L Magazine, Harvard something or other) to get their own individual racks in Lerner and John Jay.
@Anonymous This is an absurd waste of money.
@... you know. this is new york. if i want to see some band that is pretty big, it’s pretty easy to do, at least when i’m able to get out of morningside. (which, while hard, can be done when the band is worthy)
so what’s the point of having something like bacchanal? (other than giving some kids the wonderful experience of spending tens of thousands of dollars of other people’s money and the opportunity to meet rockstars) it’s convenient and supposedly builds community. i think those goals could be better served by saying “ok, spending $60,000.00-$140,000.00 on one concert is really pretty ridiculous when pretty much every band known to earth will stop by about 1 hour south of here, and that we could spend a billion on concerts and we still wouldn’t be “cool” in the eyes of our neighbor institutions so maybe we should just give up on those delusions right now. maybe we should just throw a regular weekly concert series where we get smallish bands and whoever to show up with the idea of creating a _regularly occuring community building event_.”
@.... The cool thing about bacchanal is you actually get to hang out with a group of your friends and have fun listening to music, as opposed to the 150 other times you ask or are asked to go to a show downtown and are met with “I really want to but I have soooo much…..” UCHHHHH.
Bacchanal calls all of us on our bullshit because it knows the world isn’t going to end if we don’t finish reading that one chapter and actually have fun just this one time. But this being Columbia, if you want to squash Bacchanal and officially banish fun from springtime for the rational benefit of the Columbia “community”, go for it. I hate you.
@Anonymous Agreed. I loved Bacchanal, and although I do like going downtown for shows, the Bacchanal experience is completely unique.
However, why do we have to spend so much money on the bands? Who cares if it’s someone huge. Spending close to 100,000 on paying some band sounds absolutely ridiculous…
@serious question why doesn’t bacchanal just NOT have a(n incredibly mediocre) fall concert and instead, save the money for a really awesome spring concert?
@After Mickey Avalon I have serious doubts about Bacchanal’s ability to bring us an awesome Spring Concert. I don’t know if it is worth the risk to give them so much extra money. Unless maybe we take it out of the frat budget…
@Anonymous did you come to the spring concert last year? have fun in butler
@Anonymous Where’s the V-show cast list??
@Eliza We’ll post as soon as we know, probably later today.