Student Association Productions (SAP) will be conducting a second survey concerning the spring concert. Vice President of Programming Esthephanie Peralta said she and her SAP Board will be administering the new survey due to the unavailability of the top artists that the campus voted for on the first one.
We at The New Paltz Oracle want to commend Student Association (SA) and SAP for their transparency on the issue, and hope that both parties will continue to do their job to the highest of standards.
In the past, we have seen SAP boards who have been unable to book artists for similar reasons but were dishonest about it. Last year, SAP chose the fifth-ranked artist out of eight for the concert, and the lack of transparency caused discontent within the student body at the end of the year.
However, this SAP board has been honest with the results of the survey and why they are unable to book top-ranked artists such as Lupe Fiasco and Brand New. The price SAP is willing to spend on an artist is between $40,000 and $45,000, and higher-ranked artists are asking for higher prices and their schedules aren’t working out with ours.
Unfortunately, we don’t have that much money to spend on artists. Schedules for artists change. As far as monetary concerns go, SAP also has to look at how much security, staging and other amenities such as special effects artists want will cost. With a small budget to begin with, it is difficult to find a well-known artist to perform here.
SAP has not been shy of sharing that information and being honest with how the current situation stands. This is the job and the expectation of our student government, and we need to see that this will be continued not just with the spring concert, but with all current and future issues.
Student governments are not just campus-governing bodies. They are our peers and people we choose to be friends with during four of the most important years of our lives. As such, there is a duty for them to not just be honest and transparent because that is what a government should be, but because we are students together and the campus they serve deserves nothing but the utmost respect.
Transparency has been a strength not just for this particular SAP board, but of the current SA E-board as well. While this was an expectation of a group that in the past have been vocal about transparency and how necessary it is for success, it is nice to see a governing group that is willing to share information with the student body without any sort of problems.
As a campus, we need to realize that this has not always been the case. We’ve seen E-boards that were unwilling to share information and the result of this has led to discontent for the senate and a reluctance to become involved with campus issues.
While transparency hasn’t always been a strength of ghosts of SA E-boards past, we are glad to see the progress made by current SA members. We only ask and hope that this sort of transparency will continue in the future.