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ACBU single concert streak may be permanent

The Activities Council of Bradley University will not host a spring concert this year after they used their funds to bring an artist with big name recognition, Wiz Khalifa, to campus this past November, according to the assistant director of Student Activities, Lauren Smetana

Smetana said the Student Activities Budget Review Committee grants funding around $150,000 each year for ACBU to host concerts, which coordinators spend on the artist’s fee alone. With two concerts a year, that budget is split between events, rather than all of the money going toward one artist.

“We’ve been met with such great success starting with The Band Perry [in the spring of 2013] where we had record attendance that we figured that this is what the student body was more interested in—quality rather than frequency,” Smetana said.

However, in a Sep. 26, 2014 Scout article titled “ACBU books Wiz Khalifa for fall concert,” Special Events Reserve Fund coordinator Dashawn Cason said ACBU hoped to bring back both fall and spring concerts this year.

“If the spring availability looks great and the budget is there, it is absolutely something that can be expected,” Cason said.

According to Smetana, however, the entire budget was used to make an offer to Khalifa at the end of August.

ACBU has not brought two featured artists in one year to the Hilltop since the 2011-2012 school year, when the club hosted Taking Back Sunday in the fall and Girl Talk in the spring.

“There is a lot of effort that goes into planning a concert,” Smetana said. “There’s lots of logistics that we have to plan out, and the amount of ticket sales that we were getting—from our office’s opinion—just didn’t quite warrant doing a show each semester.”

Feature Entertainment Coordinator Jackie Myers said she has heard mixed feedback about having one concert a year.

“Obviously people want a concert every semester, but I’ve also heard they understand that it is expensive and having a big name artist is way more beneficial for them,” the sophomore journalism major said. “It’s way cooler to say this big name came than these two little names came.”

Smetana said she worked with feature entertainment student coordinators to decide on hosting one artist, The Band Perry, instead of two lesser-known artists in the 2011-2012 school year.

“The Band Perry broke [the] attendance record and Wiz Khalifa sold out the Renaissance Coliseum,” Smetana said. “That’s kind of unheard of for our campus to have a concert go over so well. I would say it would be hard for anybody on campus to justify going back to the old way of spending less to do more concerts.”

A total of 2,132 tickets were bought for Girl Talk and Taking Back Sunday, while 3,151 tickets were bought for The Band Perry in the spring of 2013, and 3,760 tickets were bought for Wiz Khalifa this past November.

Smetana said ACBU doesn’t have any specific ideas for next year’s concert because artists typically don’t plan fall tours until the summer.

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