| Summary: | OK Go or OK No? Cornstock choice causes conflict Justin Bieber You know, for something different. Bork To appease the Norwegians. Iceland is the same as Norway, right? PULSE MARCH 11. 2011 6 CONCORDA Cornstock venue change announced BY MEAGAN MCDOUGALL PULSE Writer Students across Concor-dia's campus opened their e-mail accounts to a surprise in November. For the first time, the Campus Entertain-ment Commission sent a sur-vey to all students asking for their feedback on bands for Comstock, a spring music festival on campus to cele-brate the end of the year. The survey was smattered with bands from every genre and varying degrees of popular-ity, and ultimately the band OK Go, sometimes identi-fied as the treadmill band, was chosen to headline the concert. Immediately contro-versy arose, as students who voted vied for other options presented in the survey. Because OK Go has already been chosen, any changes for Cornstock will have to wait until next year to be initiated if CEC chooses to do so. "While some people may not know OK 'Go, or just think of them as that tread, mill band, others know OK Go as a Grammy-award winning band that puts on a great show," Skyler Vilt, GEC's chairman of concerts and dances said. "Our sincere hope here at CEC is that people will take advantage of the opportunity of a free end-of- the-year concert and come out with friends to have a good time." Vilt wrote a letter to the Concordian outlining the se-lection process and how they believe OK Go is the best choice. "CEC is duly commit-ted, as in every event put on by the organization, to do its best to offer an event that can be enjoyed by all Concordia students and be one that stu-dent would be excited to go to," Vilt wrote. "How do you present a concert option that can cater to the tastes of a di-verse student body of 2,800? It is no small task to do such a thing, and yet every year, CEC does its best to com-plete such a task." Vilt said that for Novem-ber's survey, CEC compiled a list of bands that were, by their best knowledge, within CEC's price range and avail-able in the spring. Over t000 students responded. Accord-ing to the survey, the top three preferred genres were alternative rock at 70 per-cent, pop at 58 percent and hip-hop and R&B at 44 per-cent. The top five bands from the student survey in the al-ternative rock category were Relient K, Colbie Caillat, Motion City Soundtrack, OK Go and Ingrid Michael-son, in that order. After look-ing at prices and availability, they chose OK Go as the band for Cornstock. "I think CEC deserves credit for its concerted efforts to include the larger student body in the Cornstock deci-sion," Vilt said. Jacob Hanson chose to voice his disagreement with CEC's choice of OK Go by creating the Facebook group "OK GO?! How about OK NO!" which currently has 120 members. He began the Facebook group in an attempt to con-nect with other people disap-pointed in CEC's choice of headliner. "If I didn't think I would have the same response from a large number of people," Hanson said, "I wouldn't have done it." Hanson was asked about who he would have liked to see instead .of OK Go but could not provide an an-swer. While Hanson does think that CEC took a positive step by including student opinions in choosing the Cornsmick band this year, he questioned why some bands were decided against after the fact because of funding, instead of weeding out those bands prior to surveying the students. "I wanted to draw atten-tion to the fact that the Con-cordia students don't always agree with what the Student Government Association and CEC decide on," Han-son said. "This group was to catch the attention of the student body and its decision makers." One of Hanson's sugges-tions to provide better enter-tainment for Cornstock was to allot a greater percentage of the $105 per semester full-time students pay for activ-ity fees. Right now, $33.41 of every student's semester activity fee goes toward CEC,' and the rest is divided between various committees and organizations like The Concordian, SGA, the Ol-son Forum Fitness Facility and LeadNow. Redistributing the stu-dent activity fee money, how-ever, is not simple, according to SGA Vice President Whit-ney Derks. This fall, SGA President Erik George and Derks sat down with each of the major organizations on campus to analyze their bud-gets line item by line item. This process helped them uncover where money could be redistributed in order to be best used, and they were able to reach an agreement with every organization. "Each leader of the major organizations (on campus) has different visions, and often budgets will fluctuate from year to year," Derks said. However, she explained that each year the proposal must fit into the range avail-able based on auto-disper-sion accounts, accounts that were set up before Derks and George took the job that put a predetermined amount of money toward each organi-zation. "SGA doesn't necessarily choose how much money is allocated to different organi-zations," Derks said. As a whole, CEC has a budget of approximately si8o,000 per year, and about s7o,000 of that goes toward the Cornstock event, said Vilt. Half of the Cornstock budget, about $35,000, goes toward the headlining band. Other Minnesota schools also hold spring music fes-tivals, which include acts like Sarah Bareilles at the University of St. Thomas, Cloud Cult and Gym Class Heroes at the University of Minnesota and Lupe Fiasco and Cobra Starship at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University, all of which would cost more than $50,000 to bring in, accord-ing to www.concertideas. con, the nation's largest and most experienced college booking agency and one of the websites CEC used to estimate band prices. In the last three years at Concor-dia, CEC has chosen Mae, HelloGoodbye and the Spill Canvas as primary headlin-ing bands, all of which fall into the alternative rock cat-egory. To put things into per-spective, the Black Eyed Peas would cost over $350,000 to bring to Concordia, and Car-rie Underwood would be up-wards of $500,000. The esti-mate for OK Go to come is around $35,000, and Colbie Callat, Relient K and Ingrid Michaelson would have all been between $io,000 and $30,000, according to the website. Vilt explained that other factors beyond the baseline cost needed to be considered as well, such as the cost of bringing the bands as far as northern Minnesota, as well as their availability and the weather conditions late April often provides in this region. With all of that considered, plus the fluctuation of prices, Vilt and CEC designated OK Go as the best choice. "As a member of CEC and a huge fan of music, I would love to be given the necessary funds to bring in Arcade Fire, Muse or Kanye West, but for all intents and purposes, our budget is quite large already and we have the money to bring in some pret-ty big names for Cornstock," Vilt said. "Money plus name recognition doesn't necessar-ily mean a better show." BY MEAGAN MCDOUGALL PULSE Writer Campus Entertain-ment Commission decided Monday evening that this year's Cornstock will be held indoors and will be-gin at 6 p.m. April 16. The conceit is held outdoors when weather allows, but the committee fears that weather will, negatively impact the turnout of this year's event. It is not un-common for Cornstock to be held indoors due to weather, but the decision to do so is usually made closer to the event's date. "I think it will change the feel of it, hopefully for the better," CEC executive liaison Brienne Roullier said. "Obviously it would be more fun to have it out-side, but considering the weather, we are hoping to make it more fun inside this year." Though it was around 60 degrees the day of Corn-stock last year, Roullier said that it was still cold tbr the event. With the flood outlook and weather predictions for this spring, CEC hopes that having Cornstock in-doors will allow students to have a better time than if they were attending the concert in the cold. The event has also been pushed back to 6 p.m. in order to give it more of a nighttime feel, in addition to making time during the day for students to study for finals. The Concordian's top five bands/performers for Cornstock 2012 After I apply for a job, should I follow up? The simple answer is, yes. Give me a minute to explain. Certainly, every potential employer that you apply to is unique and you need to be aware of the protocol estab-lished in the job advertisement but following-up after ap-plying has some very practical benefits that could make the difference between being invited for an interview or remaining buried in the applicant pool. • It is beneficial to find out if your materials have been received, if other things are required, or if additional in-formation would be helpful as your credentials are being reviewed. • Your name, as an applicant, is being mentioned and your file is getting another look. By talking to or corre-sponding with someone, you have an opportunity to be-come a "real" person rather than only an electronic or paper application. ▪ You are demonstrating a strong interest in the posi-tion by contacting the potential employer. Ask strategic, well thought out questions that show that you are serious about the job. • By following up, you can learn about timelines for closing dates, anticipated interviews, and potential start-ing dates. This allows you to plan the other aspects of your job search. • You will sleep better at night knowing that you have done what you can to be positively noticed. If you need to move on to the next employer, you know that information as well. A second aspect of following up is related to the im-portance of utilizing your contacts. If your networking efforts have produced individuals inside the organization or industry, this is the perfect time to get in touch with them. An insider can provide you with great information, but perhaps even more importantly, an insider can make contacts within the organization on your behalf. Have question for next week's column? Email career@ cord.edu . so we ean givec k elback COM/Vapine opk SOnlething to abOUt. Soulia Boy- Resulting in. either the best or worst Cornstock attendence ever. 1(eSha learn a thing or two She could lea front our dry campus.
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