At the beginning of Week Eight, Carleton’s Sproncert committee announced this year’s headliner: Between Friends. Students had mixed reactions to the announcement, with some cheering on the selection and others feeling a bit perplexed.
“I asked a buddy of mine who the headliner was because I’m trying to spend less time on Instagram. He said, ‘Oh, it’s just between friends.’ And I thought, am I not your friend? Can’t it be just between us too?” said Kahn Fuzed ’28.
But amidst the varying reactions to the committee’s current pick for headliner, some are still wondering why it took them so long to pick one. A range of theories have popped up, from the committee thinking Sproncert was actually in the fall to them realizing they had actually spent all of their money on ratty old couches to drag out onto the Rotblatt field. In reality, however, the Sproncert committee was hiding a mistake that they would never live down: they had fumbled the headliner of the century.
“Everyone was saying ‘We hated KYLE, Hippo Campus was lame,’ and so on, so we decided to get someone REALLY famous. He’s an American-born artist who is currently based out of Italy, so he’s super cultured,” said Sproncert committee member Art Isst ’26. “None of us had really heard about who he is or what he does, but he has awesome fits and so many Instagram followers. Whenever he goes ANYWHERE, the streets are packed waiting to say hi to him. He even has his own special car.”
Though some members of the committee who were unaware of this supposedly “underground” white-robe clad Roman celebrity, others were a bit apprehensive to extend an offer to such a famous figure.
“I kept trying to tell everyone that this guy is THE POPE. POPE LEO. THE FOURTEENTH. But I just kept getting interrupted, my co-committee members kept saying, ‘EJ, it’s pronounced pop,’” said EJ Khaled ’27.
Ultimately, when the Sproncert committee extended their offer to Pope Leo, they realized that securing the pontiff as their headliner would be more difficult than they expected.
“We were willing to reserve the chapel for him to hold Mass in before and after his performance, but there was just no way for his Popemobile to fit on those narrow paths that lead up to the stage. Also, he said that his robes would get muddy,” said Summer Brake ’28. “Additionally, and probably most importantly, he let us know that he can’t actually sing, and that if he were to be invited he would probably just chant liturgy, which I think is fine but I get why he would be apprehensive about it.”
