Students should appreciate Finals Fest entertainment
Vandal Entertainment has officially announced the headline act for the 2015 Finals Fest — Chance The Rapper.
The hip-hop artist was the Vandal Entertainment Board’s first choice for the leading act at this year’s Finals Fest. The event will take place May 5 and cost $15 for University of Idaho students and $30 for the general public.
Although this announcement should be viewed positively, some students will look to criticize the artist selection and have an overall negative outlook on this year’s event, if last year is any indication. Whether they don’t want the concert to be on a Tuesday, they don’t want to pay for tickets or simply don’t want a rapper as the headline artist, some students are bound to complain about something.
This terrible attitude does nothing to help the student body or the university. It portrays our student body as a bunch of spoiled brats, and for a silly reason no less.
The impossible standards set for Finals Fests stem from two years ago when Vandal Entertainment was fortunate enough to sign Macklemore at a rate that allowed student tickets to be free. The event went down as the largest, most successful concert in UI Finals Fest history.
As a result, many UI students now set the bar far too high for Finals Fest. Nobody seemed to stop and realize that getting Macklemore was a stroke of good luck — he was an artist Vandal Entertainment happened to sign right before his popularity exploded in 2013.
Vandal Entertainment boards of the last two years have worked just as hard to please students for Finals Fest, and they deserve the same level of appreciation the board received in 2013.
Last year, students infamously raised a huge fuss over the selected 2014 headline act Grouplove. Students complained about the genre of music and the cost of tickets, forcing Vandal Entertainment to hand out tickets for free, depleting the organization’s budget and creating even more of a challenge this year.
Admittedly, Grouplove was a niche artist that catered to a small group of music lovers. It was an attempt to stray from the typical rap/hip-hop artists that typically perform at Finals Fest — Childish Gambino (2012) and Macklemore.
This year’s Vandal Entertainment board took the criticism to heart and returned to the genre students have shown support for and said they wanted.
The board worked hard to find an artist students would want to see, even for a small price.The harsh truth of the matter is students can’t afford to have a bad attitude about Finals Fest anymore, or else they risk ending the event for good.
The whole point of Finals Fest isn’t to get a super popular artist to come and play for the university. The point of the concert is to bring students together for one last fun event before finals week starts. Instead of whining about music, students should instead embrace what Finals Fest is really about and enjoy it while they can.
— EB
VandalFan
This was a poorly written post, and it is unfortunate that UIdaho has not taken this opinon post down. Labeling students as "spoiled brats" is unprofessional and unproductive, and fails to acknowledge the diverse financial needs within the student body. Instead of blaming the students, why doesn't Vandal Entertainment explore alternative funding options that can provide free tickets to all students, (including the broke students who are forced to work full-time, while being full-time students who cannot rely on their well-off parents to support them financially) to ensure inclusivity. As a student and hardcore Vandal fan, do better Vandal Entertainment.