Runner Nights Spring Concert was a step in the right direction for student life at CSU Bakersfield.
Credit to Campus Programming, Associated Students Inc., Student Housing, Student Recreation Center and the Office of Student Affairs for being able to bring an up-and-coming artist like Alessia Cara onto the campus for Runner Nights.
Having a concert that featured an artist like Cara at CSUB was big for the campus because it’s something that was sorely lacking here.
Food sales, fundraisers and club events are great but a concert featuring an artist such as Cara will interest students more and amp up the student life on this campus.
Kudos to everyone involved.
Students ask for these kinds of events, but when they realize that it’s going to cost some money, they all of a sudden are against it. Guess what? No big-name artist is going to come to campus for free.
Yes, Cara isn’t a huge name like Luke Bryan, Taylor Swift, or Drake, but it’s a stepping stone to getting bigger names in the future.
While the $16,000 ASI funded for the spring concert seems like a lot, it’s much better the money goes to a concert that is promoting student life at CSUB than another food sale or film screening.
Not saying those events don’t matter, but this is something new and something that hadn’t happened on campus.
It’s great students are concerned about where all their money is going, but it’s better than it going to more Krispy Kreme fundraisers or taco sales.
These Runner Nights events have done a good job of promoting student life on campus and breeding the collegiate atmosphere that some students have been asking for.
This doesn’t mean we are only asking for concerts from now on.
Go ahead and have club events, discussions, speakers on campus like Tracy Martin, food sales and fundraisers throughout the year. But one concert a year won’t hurt and would be great to have as well. This was a good start.
The idea of having to pay to get in the concert after our fees had paid to bring Cara onto campus was bad, but it can help to make up the money that was needed for this event. Additionally, in the grand-scheme of things, paying $5 or even $10 to see a concert featuring Cara is not very much.
However, CSUB should have thought of opening this up to the public and having them pay to get in and just let it be free to all students.
Everyone would have won.
Students get to go in for free, the community gets to enjoy the concert as well, and CSUB is able to make up some of the money.
In fall 2014, The Runner wrote a staff editorial on the importance of having concerts on campus and this was something even ASI President Mike Kwon had on his platform. Therefore, it’s great he and everyone else involved were able to pull this off.
This is a step in the right direction to get more student life on campus and build that collegiate atmosphere at CSUB.
Getting someone like Cara who is on the rise will help us in the long run. Maybe in a few years we will get someone of bigger name value and, who knows, Cara may be willing to do this again.
In the future, Cara may be a top artist and students would be glad they experienced seeing her live.
There were 650 tickets sold for the first-ever concert. Sure plenty of students weren’t able to attend, didn’t hear about the event, didn’t know who Cara was, or just simply weren’t interested enough. But this was a good start.
It was a great way to cap off the final Runner Nights of the school year.
Now, CSUB needs to build off this and just keep making these events bigger and bigger to give it more of that college atmosphere.
