<e surrounding Spring Concert has started early this year, thanks to Facebook and some creative uses of the Internet.
For the first time, Carleton students can vote for their top picks to perform at the year-end concert. The Spring Concert Committee made the announcement in an e-mail sent this Tuesday. Voting continues until 5:00 pm on Monday, February 7.
Students can pick their top four choices from a list of eight bands selected by the planning committee. The bands cross the genre spectrum : Antibalas, Blue Scholars, Chairlift, Dawes, Flying Louts, Fun, J. Cole, and Super Mash Bros made the final cut.
“This is our first time putting the headlining bands to a vote and we’ve had a great response so far,” Trevor Hill ’11, one of the three Spring Concert Committee Chairs, said in an e-mail. The committee hopes to get over 50 percent of the campus to participate in the vote.
After the voting ends, the committee will begin negotiating with the top vote -getter. If the budget permits, Hill said, the committee will try to book the top two bands. Once they settle on the main acts, Hill and the rest of the committee will begin filling out the rest of the music lineup.
The 30th annual Spring Concert will be held on the Saturday of 8th week, May 21st.
The Student Activities Office is also promoting the vote with a Facebook event, continuing to develop its presence on the social networking site.
Student Activities started a Facebook page earlier this year to advertise campus events and has been posting announcements at least once a day.
Currently the site has 182 followers, but according to Assistant Director of SAO Nadine Sunderland, the number has been growing over the past two weeks leading up to Mid-Winter Break.
But the new online voting option and Facebook promos aren’t the only change to Spring Concert plans this year. Hill said that this year the concert schedule will be pushed back two hours to start and 2:00 pm and end at 10:00 pm. “We think having headliners play at night will be awesome,” he said. “And we will have lights set up.”
The Spring Concert Committee is an open committee that manages a $40,000 CSA-funded budget. The group has been meeting weekly since the end of fall term to organize music, food, and equipment for the event.
Sunderland was looking forward to a smoothly organized and fun event this year. “Our main goal is that there is something for everybody,” she said.