The Student Association voted 6-0-1 in favor of allocating an additional $70,000 toward expenses associated with the spring concert on Wednesday, Oct. 20. The concert budget is now $150,000, up from $80,000.
The budget increase came after a two-week process in which members of the SA executive committee discussed the possibility of bringing in a larger artist to make up for a lack of concerts over the past year.
Last fall, dismal ticket sales for the Gym Class Heroes and Asher Roth concert led SA to make tickets free, resulting in a loss of $14,000. This led to the cancellation of a spring 2010 concert and the decision to forgo a fall concert this semester. The SA executive board initially decided that they would fund a spring concert with $80,000.
The proposal for a larger concert budget came from senior Bill Greco, concerts coordinator for the Activities Commission.
"I got the budget of $80,000, but I also knew that there'd been no fall concert, and no spring concert. We needed a boost," he said. "I wanted to bring in more artists, and extra money equals awesome possibilities."
After first hearing Greco's proposal for a budget increase, the SA executive board invited him to give a presentation at an SA meeting in order to facilitate discussion among the students.
"There was overwhelming support from students," said SA president, senior Doug Sinski. "His presentation really changed all of our minds about the budget increase. It opens up the doors to bring a lot of currently popular artists to Geneseo."
At the Oct. 20 meeting, SA voted in favor of Greco's proposal.
"[Student] input was very positive and SA really agreed with it," Greco said. "They thought it was a great idea and voted it in."
This past week, Greco sent the official spring concert survey to Geneseo students asking them to vote for one large artist and up to four smaller artists.
"I composed the list based on a survey that I did about a month ago in the Union," he said. "I asked people to give me virtually any artist they'd want to see, excluding artists like Taylor Swift who are out of our price range. We had a solid 20 to 30 names coming up."
Artists that were most commonly brought up included Drake, Ke$ha, MGMT and Vampire Weekend, all of which were included in the concert survey. In total, there are 42 artists students can select.
"We're asking people to vote within these parameters," Greco said.
The survey also asks students to list the maximum ticket price they would be willing to pay and to vote on which concert structure they would like to see. There are three options including a headliner/co-headliner structure, which Greco said he prefers. He reported that the survey has been successful so far.
"We're loving the input we're getting from students," Greco said.
For more information and updates or to take the concert survey, visit the "Geneseo Spring Concert 2011" Facebook page.