the Informer

The Spring Fling protests came and went this week largely without incident. Though the Facebook event page boasted over 750 confirmed attendees, Informer staff counted about 30 to 40 people lining up to ask questions of the Campus Activities Team’s general board.

If anything this is proof-positive that social networking sites are a detriment to affecting real change on a campus.
Seven hundred-plus people said they would be in Gengras Student Union, but never showed up. Regardless, seeing around 40 people showing up is a huge number for a campus that is apathetic to most issues plaguing the university.
So, why are students here so apathetic to so many issues? Some of the people I’ve talked to in covering the change of location and date of the Spring Fling concerts mostly said that their voices are never heard.

The problem is that no one is willing to speak up about anything. When parking changes were implemented at the beginning of the year, why didn’t people move their cars off campus? Why didn’t people demonstrate outside of the Public Safety building on campus?

Why do we sell back books to the bookstore only to have them turned around at 50 percent markup of the price they paid us for it? Sure, other places are going to do the same practice, but it would be a statement to the University’s bookstore.

Why aren’t people fed up with soaring costs of food on campus and why don’t they take their business somewhere other than the Village Market? This is a sample of voting with the wallet, a simple practice that would make a business (in this case, the university) change its practice.

At the end of the day, Spring Fling isn’t that big of a deal. While we do pay for it in our tuition we also pay for other things with our money, keeping organizations such as this one running. Sure, there’s this feeling of entitlement because upperclassmen have a feeling of tradition with this event.

However, if this university ran into financial issues, I hope that everyone would understand that cutbacks to the concert and other things that are only budgeted to spend money and not make a profit at all. I’m not aware if CAT makes a profit on events such as this with high artist costs and management costs.

I feel that I’m in the minority of people who feel this way about the Spring Fling Concert and it’s clear that there are some logistical issues presented by hosting the concert. For instance, though CAT maintains capacity will be a non-factor in the concert, I’m still curious how the organization will respond if the show indeed does sell out and people are left a the door. While it’s very reassuring to see a fraction of the campus actually rally behind something–even a cause as banal as this, time could be much better spent on fighting real battles that affect change on more than just one weekend in April.