After a Hawaiian student living in the residence halls returned home early this year following alleged harassment, journalism student Trevor Atkins tried for months to think of a way to publicize the resources available to freshmen who experience similar situations and feel the same isolation.
“Everybody knows that the most vulnerable students are the freshmen,” Atkins, who is also from Hawaii, said. He said he asked himself, “What can we do better next year?”
The answer came when he attended a concert in Portland by Ozomatli, an Afro-Latin band well known for its social justice activism and progressive political views. He said he realized a concert would attract freshmen to an event that gathered student support resources into one convenient location.
Atkins proposed the concert at last week’s Student Senate meeting, asking the Senate for $29,000 to bring the band to campus for a pre-fall term show. Senators showed skepticism during an hour-long debate over dispersing money from the Senate’s surplus fund, an overflow of money from previous years of student-paid fees, and ultimately decided to postpone the decision until next week.
Much of the debate centered on what senators said was lax planning.
Atkins wants to offer the band $15,000 and spend $14,000 on production and marketing.
Although the band usually is paid between $25,000 and $30,000, he said his offer is reasonable given the progressive cause.
Senators questioned the value of bankrolling such an expensive and potentially risky expenditure because the Senate might feel obligated to allocate more funds if the band demanded more money.
If allocated, the funds would go into the Cultural Forum’s budget.
The Portland State University’s student body president has initiated a similar event to increase student knowledge of campus programs. PSU will host a concert June 3 featuring Ozomatli at the cost $30,000, $20,000 of which goes to the band, according to a recent article in The Daily Vanguard. The entity that oversees student groups at PSU is fronting the money and expects a refund through ticket sales, according to the article.
Although ticket sales were proposed during the Senate meeting, most senators favored soliciting student groups for donations as a fundraising technique. Atkins emphasized the need to keep the concert free to publicize the resources available on campus.
“I’d really like to see this (concert) benefit these groups rather than tax them,” Atkins said, responding to a question about the possibility of having student groups make donations.
A $15,000 allocation was considered a possibility by some senators, but a significant amount of time was spent debating how Atkins could raise the additional money without student fees.
ASUO Vice President Kyla Coy told senators that President Adam Walsh, who was not at the meeting, did not favor the large expense.
Walsh “seemed very negative about spending this much money on a concert,” she said at the meeting Wednesday.
Moments later she received a text message from Walsh confirming that he would probably veto the allocation if passed by Senate.
Senator Dallas Brown succeeded in encouraging the Senate to postpone the proposal until the contract agreement and some of the budget details, which Senator Kyle McKenzie called “flimsy-pansy,” were ironed out.
Brown said he would much rather see the event held after the majority of students were back on campus, not during the week before school, so that the entire campus could benefit. He asked that Atkins return next week with a more official presentation that would outline various costs.
Next Wednesday’s meeting is the last before the current Senate term expires and new members join the representative body.