Drummer for New Politics (pictured above), who headlined for the 2016 Spring Concert at the Kuhl Gymnasium. The spring concert has since been replaced by off-campus concerts. GCAB has reassesed its approach to student safety. (Annalee Bainnson/Staff Photographer)
The Geneseo Campus Activities Board will continue to host off-campus trips to concerts in the area after assessing safety procedures and retraining chaperones to handle crises.
This concert series began this semester with a trip to a Josh Groban and Idina Menzel concert on Tuesday Nov. 13 at the Blue Cross Arena in Rochester.
Tickets were exclusively sold to Geneseo students online. The website specifies that one ticket can be purchased per Geneseo student, and the person purchasing the ticket must attend the event and ride the bus.
“The amount of tickets we can offer to students depends on the concert venue,” Student Association Director of Student Programing Julia Sisti said.
“It is not something that we can really control, but rather based on availability and what a venue can offer us.”
Sisti explained why the Josh Groban and Idina Menzel concert and other concerts for the semester have not been advertised until recently.
“The advertising begins once we can get confirmation of tickets,” Sisti said.
“We need to be able to actually purchase tickets before we start advertising, this way we aren’t false advertising. Also, we need to make sure that we are working with our ticket office to ensure that we can get students access to be able to buy the tickets, and also work with the bus companies.”
“The one-week timeline to advertise is tight in general, and it is not ideal for us either,” Sisti said.
“However, this is just kind of the way it works when you are purchasing and selling block tickets.”
Student concert coordinator senior Megan Avenia explained how the delay in advertising was also related to the training of chaperones.
“The delay was due to the fact that all of the chaperones that we planned on bringing were not properly trained yet for any kind of situation that could arise bringing students off campus,” Avenia said. “Now that everybody has been trained, we feel a lot more confident taking students off of campus in that regard.”
According to Avenia, GCAB worked to train the chaperones in coordination with the Department of Student Life. Chaperones are members of the Student Association or GCAB.
“We wanted to ensure that any issues that may arise off campus can be handled by chaperones who are trained to handle those situations,” Sisti said.
“We worked hard to put together a strong training series for that, to ensure that our chaperones were equipped to handle any situations that may occur off campus.”
The limited number of tickets that GCAB can offer to students for off-campus concerts is also based on the number of chaperones. One hundred tickets is probably the maximum amount that will be offered, according to Sisti.
“There were not any issues [with student safety] at previous concerts,” Sisti said. “We have had pretty successful encounters. However, we hear about a lot of issues taking place at concerts and want to make sure that our students in particular are prepared. We simply want to make sure that we are being as safe and cautious as possible.”
There potentially will be more off-campus concerts hosted by GCAB this year and names will not be released until the ticket purchasing process is completed, according to Sisti.
“As of now we don’t have any official dates locked in for other concerts,” Avenia said.
“We are looking at other things, but nothing has been officially purchased. We are looking at potentially doing one more concert this semester and the remainder would be in the spring.”
There will not be any on-campus concerts in spring 2019, according to Sisti.
“Last year we had issues not being able to take students off-campus because the venues that we have looked at in the past were not offering concerts,” Sisti said.
“However, this year they are. For that reason, we are not going to be having a spring concert on campus. Now we will be able to take students off-campus and have a normal-sized spring fest like we used to.”
News editor Zainab Tahir contributed reporting to this article.u