Undergraduate student council presidential candidate Gabe Rose and his fellow Bruins United members tout the Concerts for Cash idea as a surefire moneymaker for student groups.
The idea is that students could pay affordable ticket prices for an on-campus concert featuring top mainstream musical artists, all in the name of raising money for our student organizations.
However, as organizers for the Mighty Mic Human Rights Awareness concert, we foresee some flaws in the Concerts for Cash plan that may make it nothing but a fantasy.
Based on our Mighty Mic experience, we think the costs of bringing “huge bands (that you’ve actually heard of) to campus,” as Gabe Rose says in his campaign statement, will far exceed revenues made from affordable student tickets.
For example, Pauley Pavilion would have cost us around $60,000. The Black Eyed Peas quoted Mighty Mic a discount rate of $1,000 per minute ““ and that’s only because of their support for the selected good causes.
And what kind of good cause would Concerts for Cash support? Not Doctors Without Borders nor relief for war-torn areas, but rather the student groups belonging to a university that appears wealthy because it is located in one of the most affluent areas of California and has a strong, supportive alumni network.
Turning to corporate sponsorship to fund the concert would be unreliable for the same reason; corporations that usually set aside a small percentage of their profits for charitable donations would be reluctant to allocate this money toward UCLA student groups.
We think Concerts for Cash would be a cash-losing venture. It would take money away from student groups initially and recover only a small part of that money through concert revenue, resulting in much less cash flow.
Additionally, we as students would be providing that revenue ““ we would pay for the concert tickets. Concerts for Cash is a great idea in principle, but in practice may prove to cause more harm than good.
Srinath is a fourth-year biology student. Lee is a fourth-year international development studies and global studies student.