Party Foul

Last Saturday’s Springfest Afterparty was a $16,000 failure. And it wasn’t Mother Nature’s fault.

According to Harvard Concert Commission Chair Jack P. McCambridge ’06, only about 150 students showed up to the Afterparty. While the rain certainly decreased turnout, the timing and planning of the event was hindered by serious flaws that would have hampered the festivities even if the weather had been good. The Undergraduate Council (UC) needs to rework future events based around Springfest to ensure their success. Independent of the weather, however, there were other factors conspiring against a successful Afterparty that should have dissuaded the bare majority of council members who voted for the event.

The chief problem with this year’s Afterparty was the lack of a big draw. When the contract for a Snoop Dogg concert fell through, the party lost its indispensable attraction. Granted, the failure to sign Snoop Dogg was not entirely the fault of the UC. The security costs and restrictions demanded by the Boston Police Department made funding the concert impossible without Harvard’s help. Following this, the stinginess of the College and the President’s Office put Snoop out of the question. Replacing a big name performer with student bands was not an acceptable alternative, however, and we question the wisdom of those UC members who insisted on holding the event anyway.

Timing played a huge role in sinking the UC’s post-Springfest efforts as well. Prefrosh Saturday from 6-9 p.m. is already loaded with activities, from a cappella performances to musicals to pre-gaming events for parties later in the night. A new party without a big attraction could not hope to compete with the established activities already planned by student groups, particularly since the Afterparty excluded prefrosh. Planning a big UC event on Prefrosh Weekend also meant that many alternative rain venues were unavailable. While organizers’ stubborn optimism about the Afterparty’s success “rain or shine” was appreciated, if the UC is going to allocate more than many Americans earn in a year for three hours of live music and beer, in the future it needs to have workable contingency plans.

There’s a surefire fix for all of these problems: hold future events the week before Prefrosh Weekend. This solution would not hurt attendance, since prefrosh were denied access to the Afterparty anyway. And this way, the event would face much less competition both for space and for the coveted leisure time that Harvard students have to spend. The only downside would be the extra cost of putting on the event without the infrastructure already assembled for Springfest. With less competition, holding the party the week before would draw more students no matter the notoriety of the musical act.

All of this raises an interesting question: Is there room for mid-sized UC-sponsored social events? The Afterparty and the UC’s recent attempt at a booze cruise—“Havana on the Harbor”—lost a combined $18,000 of students’ money. In contrast, the UC’s most successful endeavors have been with either huge concerts featuring Bob Dylan and Busta Rhyme or small-scale events like Friday Movie Nights. These are the UC’s unique events—events that no other organization has the wherewithal to put together. Anything in between these two in scale seems to fall through the cracks, and for good reason. Venues from the Quincy Collective to Loker Pub Nights to individual Houses host student bands most weeks. And alcohol at Final Clubs and in-room parties is even cheaper than one dollar a draft. Without novelty but still sporting a hefty price tag, the Afterparty turned into a financial sinkhole that benefited a meager number of Harvard students. The lesson to be learned seems to be that, at least in recent memory, the UC is at its best spending a ton of money on blowout concerts or spending almost nothing on small, unique events like Movie Nights—less than $500, more than $30,000, or bust.

It’s important to note that the debate on the floor of the UC to allocate funds for the Afterparty reflected all of our concerns. The vote ended up 19-18 in favor of funding the event. This one failure does not spell doom for UC events as a whole. With a schedule change to the week before Springfest, future Afterparties could fulfill their promise. But hindsight is 20/20. And with its benefit, we would have preferred that the UC pocketed the money it spent on the Afterparty for bigger (or smaller) future plans.