Each semester, every Bradley undergraduate enrolled in more than nine credit hours is required to pay an $85 student activity fee, totaling $170 annually per student. This fund, totaling more than $850,000, is then distributed towards various events for the student body to enjoy, including Late Night BU, campus movie showings and the spring concert.
In previous years, Bradley hosted both a fall and spring musical performance with the chief interest being student enjoyment. Acts included Lupe Fiasco and Weezer, and tickets never cost more than $10 for students.
Last year, this trend changed with the cancellation of a fall concert and inviting The Band Perry to play at our spring concert. Tickets initially cost students $15 and reached $20 closer to the concert date.
The vast majority of ticketholders, as it turned out, was not students; instead, the concert was used as a fundraiser, charging non-students $30.
This problem is only getting worse. Bradley’s spring concert performer is rumored to cost more than $150,000. If the numbers are broken down, a student already pays between $25 to 30 toward the spring concert through their annual student activity fees. On top of that, students will pay an additional $15 to 20 for a ticket to a concert they have already paid for.
If this seems strange, it should. As it stands today, undergraduate student activity fees are used to pay a famous musician to perform for the students; yet Bradley charges the students twice to see a concert they have already paid for.
This brings up a few important questions. Why are students required to buy a ticket for a concert they have already paid for? Why has the focus shifted from entertaining the students to making money off of surroundings locals?
This letter is not an attack on any member of Student Activities Budget Review Committee (SABRC) rather, it is a call for the undergraduate student body to pay attention to how our money is spent. We are obviously grateful that we have such a large student activity budget, but it is ridiculous to make us pay for something we have already paid for.
Perhaps the reason has something to do with turning a profit on a recently built Renaissance Coliseum, which costs more than $51 million?
Whatever the justification is behind closed doors, Bradley’s undergraduates deserve better than this. We should not pay twice for something that is paid and done with, period.
– Ethan Heller
Senior Philosophy and History major
