For Concerts This Year the Pioneer Beats the Deer

The posters went up within just the first few weeks of school advertising The Fray concert-but it was across town, at Sacred Heart University. Only a few weeks later, Sacred Heart put up posters for yet another concert, Maroon 5, to be held there in mid November.

And Fairfield? Besides countless rumors of various artists that may be coming to perform at Fairfield, not a word has been mentioned to the students of any hope for a fall or spring concert.

Senior at Fairfield Jeff Seiser, President of Fairfield University Student Association (FUSA) said, “Sure, Sacred Heart has great concerts, and I support the fact that students go to those concerts, but the difference between Sacred Heart and Fairfield is that FUSA makes it a priority to serve the school every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday with events that get the entire school to be involved on campus, for example “Late Night at The Stag” alone costs $12,000. To put thousands of dollars into a concert for 2,000 people is not something that FUSA views as responsible.”

Seiser was asked about how FUSA decides on what artist will be chosen to perform at Fairfield, he said, “We try to pick the group that is the most fun, so one year we went with Ludacris. When we picked him the students complained that they wanted someone with more musical talent. The following year we chose John Legend and students complained that he was not wild and crazy enough. It’s all about having a good agent and pure luck!”

Yes, Fairfield was rated in The Princeton Review as the #1 most homogenous university, however, that certainly does not mean that all Fairfield students would like to hear the same music. Fairfield University Student Association (FUSA), can simply choose a band and assume that everyone will be content with whatever band comes to perform on campus, without asking the students their opinion.

When Fairfield University had the outdated rapper Ludacris for their 2007 spring concert, Sacred Heart had not only the flourishing Ne-Yo, but they also had the well known artist T-Pain. A year prior to Ludacris, Fairfield University had O.A.R in concert, but yet again, Sacred Heart was able to top that with the popular bands The Goo Goo Dolls, Hinder, and Augustana.

A major dilemma that Fairfield has is that the biggest indoor arena on campus, Alumni Hall, has a capacity of 2,000 people, while Sacred Heart University can hold over 5,000 people in their facility, known as the Pitt Center. Sacred Heart is able to make more money from ticket sales, allowing them to have a much higher budget.
Another difference between the two Universities is that Sacred Heart has its own website, shutickets.com, where concert-goers can easily purchase tickets directly from the school, which works quite smoother than ticketmaster.com, the source Fairfield uses to buy the students their tickets.

Money is always the biggest issue between the students and the performing artists. This was not always the case for the performers that came to Fairfield in years prior. Although Alumni Hall does not have the best acoustics, it was not an issue for Billy Joel when he came to Fairfield’s campus, and it was certainly not a problem for Southside Johnny, which was the band that Bruce Springsteen used to be a part of. It was simply about the music during that time, and now it seems to be about everything but the music.

Francis Golen, a Fairfield alum from the class of 1980, who was a member of Fairfield’s concert crew said, “There was a strong passion for music when I attended Fairfield. We valued, expected and appreciated the work that the Student Entertainment Crew (SEC) put into creating the best entertainment experience for Fairfield students.”

Golen reminisced on how his favorite bands that he set up for were Billy Joel, Dave Mason, Hall and Oates, and The Good Rats. The Good Rats were a prominent Long Island based band from the late 1970’s.

In a non-scientific sample survey, 20 random students were asked what price would be fair to see a band of their choosing. The average price range came to be $50. This would mean that a sold out show at Alumni Hall would come to $10,000. John Mayer and Taylor Swift were the most popular requests for the survey.

Although Fairfield students do not have the opportunity to see the extravagant concerts that they would hope to attend at Alumni Hall, there are other opportunities for students to go to quality concerts in the Fairfield community. This coming December, Tim Reynolds will be performing at The Fairfield Theater Company (FTC) on Post Road.

Reynolds is a multi-instrumentalist, who often tours with Dave Matthews as an acoustic duo. In addition to performing as a member of Dave Matthews & Friends instruments, he has gained the most acclaim for his performance on acoustic and electric guitar, equally.

FTC works diligently to promote their concerts to Fairfield students weekly, especially because the lack of concerts that come to the university. There are two venues in Fairfield County, a 200 seat theater a mile away on Post Rd, and a 1,400 seat auditorium in Bridgeport (the Klein). The opportunity for students to attend great concerts is always happening somewhere in the Fairfield area, however, Fairfield students will have to work a bit harder than Sacred Heart students at finding these opportunities.

Reflective Essay: Original story #1
My goal of the piece is to at first show concern that Fairfield does not appear to be up to par against Sacred Heart when it comes to the success of concerts. I then tried to show that yes it’s something we can improve on, however, here are the reasons that Fairfield is better than Sacred Heart, and then the alternative is for students to go to the Fairfield Theater Company. It was a bit hard for me to come up with the best transitions, and I still need to interview a non scientific random sample of students so that I can get different opinions of what concerts students would pay to see at Fairfield.

I tried to use the who, what, where, when, why, how technique for my first original story, but it was still very hard to try and figure out what was and was not important in my story. I tried to put in too much detail so that I can decide later what material is not that important to the reader.

I think that this is certainly the hardest story that I have done thus far, however, I had the most fun doing this story because I felt that I had a lot of control of where I wanted my story to go. I tried to also remember that I should be able to take out the quotes, and still have the paper make sense and have a point.

The biggest struggle with the second draft was to re arrange where all of my quotes and facts should go. I will also be fixing my transitions and trying to come up with a better start or finish if you think it is necessary. I really like how we were forced to make the draft for our papers beforehand because it forced me to get a head start and not have to wait until the last minute to write a mediocre story. I had someone else’s opinion to work with, and that really helped.

I learned that writing drafts is the way to go! I should make drafts as much as I can, whether they are required or not because then I am able to get more ideas, and if I write a story, leave it un touched for a few days, and then come back to the story, I am able to think of more ideas that I may not have thought of if I waited until the last minute.