Solving the Springfest Mess

To the editors:

The annual big-Springfest-band fiasco is beginning to lose its titillative value (`Council Nixes Sister Hazel,' March 9). College students here have indefatigably diverse musical tastes, and the drive to appropriate five-figure sums for a band that appeals to the whole campus attempts to reify "the campus" under a fictive narrative of "spirit" in the service of an oppressive pennant-waving ideology.

The one indisputable role of a Springfest band is to put students who want to be out dancing in the sun, out dancing in the sun. Any number of cheap bands can do this, and the Undergraduate Council could pay for a few of them to entertain consenting segments of the student population for the afternoon. Undoubtedly many students would fold their arms and disapprove, but hey, that's society. BENJAMIN J. LIMA '98   March 9, 1998