If I had to choose one thing that has really disappointed me in my years here at Cal State Long Beach, I would have to say it’s our lack of concerts on campus. Every week, my friends at UC San Diego and Cal State Fullerton are bragging to me about which bands their student governments and program councils are bringing to their campuses. But every time I walk passed a band playing on our campus, it’s always an obscure unsigned band that nobody watches. Can’t we get a decent band to play here?
UCSD has amazing bands come play on its campus weekly. I have made the long car ride down south on numerous occasions to see bands like RX Bandits, Letter Kills, The Matches, Rooney and Sugarcult entertain the distinctively smaller student population of that campus.
It even has an all-day fair and festival each year called the Sun God Festival. When I went last year, it had fair rides, food vendors, fireworks and two stages filled with top-notch entertainment, including My Chemical Romance and Cypress Hill as co-headliners. The best part is it’s free for students. The costs come out of the activity fees students pay at the beginning of the quarter.
UCSD students pay a $21 campus activity fee and get awesome events like weekly concerts and the Sun God Festival. We pay $44 each semester to the Associated Students Inc. and another $50 to the University Student Union, and we get a bunch of bands that would probably pay us to play. I don’t get it. We have almost 10,000 more students than UCSD, and we are paying more.
Even Cal State Fullerton has us beat. It has up-and-coming bands like I Hate Kate, June, Saosin and She Wants Revenge play for free on campus. It also has a free end-of-the-year festival for students that its student government throws called Fullerton’s Ultimate Summer Concert. This year, it is being headlined by Shiny Toy Guns, Consequence and Sherwood. It might not be as huge as Sun God, but it’s at least something.
Even my little community college in the beach town of Oceanside had better entertainment. For the $6 student fee there, we had “Last Comic Standing” winner Dat Phan do stand up comedy, “Beavis and Butthead” and “King of the Hill” creator Mike Judge came and spoke and Warped Tour favorites The Matches played at the campus during my time there.
At the end of last semester, the Union Weekly put a poll on its Web site asking students who they would like to see headline a winter concert at our school. People got excited. There was even a thread on the MySpace.com CSULB messageboard where students were debating about who should play. But the semester ended, and a concert never happened.
I just don’t understand why there isn’t more entertainment on campus. Besides the occasional free movie screening or the $2 movie nights, we really don’t have much entertainment to look forward to for our $44 fee. But if students don’t complain, it isn’t going to get any better.
CSULB has more than 35,000 students, two newspapers, two radio stations and a gorgeous campus. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to bring some A-list entertainment here. Even B-list would be OK. Anything is better than what we have now.
