Last Saturday night, members of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and the Programming Board hosted the Loud Music College Tour in Gottesman, which wasn’t nearly as successful as they hoped.
The Loud Music Tour features up-and-coming hip-hop, R&B, and other contemporary artists. The tour travels primarily in the United States, and occasionally internationally. The show consisted of performances by artists such as Justin Rose, Sam Siegel, Phoenix, Naza da Great and Klair Kia.
“This was an effort to bring a concert back to Pace because it’s something that’s been missing in the community for the past couple of years for whatever reasons with budgeting or lack thereof,” senior philosophy major Quadry Harris said.
The last official concert hosted by the Pleasantville campus dates back to a 2012 Wale performance on campus.
“The more well-known artists are a large part of the budget and unfortunately not a lot of students came out to see them, which is horrible because it was right before J. Cole and Wale blew up…I attended both and they both put on phenomenal shows…for people that come out tonight I’m certain these artists will perform just as well,” said Harris, who is also the president of unity and social justice.
Reality shortly set in as the night started and the concert brought a minimal attendance.
“We advertised through social media and flyers to get attention but a lot of people at Pace just aren’t coming out to events anymore…even when I’m working with the SGA [in reference to the Pace Code event during Fall 2013] it’s like pulling teeth to get people to co-sponsor and show up to events,” Harris said.
Last fall the SGA hosted the Pace Code event, which brought out a significant amount of students, partially due to the amount of organizations that agreed co-sponsor the event. Upon co-sponsoring, those organizations were required to have a certain amount of members from their org to attend.
“With the exception of that large scale event for the most part attendance has been on a steady decline and its starting to become the accepted culture around here,” Harris said.
“One of the problems I’ve noticed is that we still have this culture of students leaving on the weekends, so it’s hard to get them to stay for events,” assistant director of the SDCA Robert Thomas Jones said.
According to Jones, it’s typically the larger events that will bring in the most people, but unfortunately sometimes that’s not the case.
“We prefer having larger than smaller events because those are the ones that have the potential to bring out 50-250 people,” Jones said.
Jones also stated that he doesn’t see The Loud event as a milestone that may signify that concerts are coming back to Pace and that it’s up to the students to decide if they want a concert or not.
“As long as students want a concert I can always see students planning a concert,” Jones said.
The moral to the story is that if students are unwilling to get involved by attending these events, there is no point in planning them and wasting the time and money.
“It’s a current issue, and it just seems like its dampening the excitement of Pace’s students’ spirits,” Harris said.