Gone Till September

Instead of curling up in bed to write a paper or study for next week’s final, many students would have preferred to spend the night unwinding at a concert. A week ago, that seemed likely—Undergraduate Council President Sujean S. Lee ’03 announced that Wyclef Jean and Jurassic 5 were going to perform this evening at the Bright Hockey Center for a crowd of over 3,000 people.

But last Thursday, Lee regretfully announced that the concert would not happen. The University administration cancelled the event amid concern that the Harvard Concert Commission (HCC) could not sell the 3,000 tickets in such a short time frame—which was compressed when Harvard’s Office of the General Counsel became occupied reviewing the contract’s details. Aborting the concert only days before it was scheduled to happen was unfair given HCC’s persistent work in bringing popular talent to campus. In retrospect, however, the administration and HCC were both unprepared to carry out this event; there was, at the very least, a communication breakdown.

HCC should have given the University far more time to review and approve the plans for the concert. At the same time, however, the contract should have been finalized earlier, and if the concert was in jeopardy, the administrators should have indicated as much to HCC.

In order to ensure that a debacle like this does not happen again, the administration and HCC must work more closely together and establish a formal procedure for approving concerts. Information on venue availability should be released as early as possible. This is especially true for those places seldom used for concerts, such as the hockey center—and the football stadium, which has great potential to host a large-scale performance. As a result, HCC would be able to plan concerts earlier, potentially easing administrators’ concerns about ticket sales.

Though the budget, production and hospitality had already been finalized when HCC began to publicize the concert, it should have waited to release information about the event until the contract had been approved. Expectations were high for the performance, and it is obviously disappointing that they were not realized.

While much appreciated, HCC’s efforts could be improved with more student involvement. Any student who is dedicated to planning good concerts should be able to join the commission.

After organizing the successful Dispatch concert in late October, HCC proved itself capable of attracting students to live professional concerts. The commission should start searching now for fall performers in order to avoid the difficulties that plagued the plans for tonight’s concert.