The Convo will see empty seats come April despite three consecutive years of large acts performing during the spring.
“There was never a show scheduled for this year … but we’ve been making efforts for a couple of months now to get the process moving along and we’ve been running up against obstacle after obstacle,” said Vice President of Student Affairs Ryan Lombardi. “Ultimately we decided to pull the plug and focus our efforts to next year.”
Student Senate Vice President Anna Morton said she agreed with Lombardi’s decision and wants to start securing funds from student organizations for a 2015 concert, in hopes of setting up a system for the Spring Convo Concert to be an annual event.
Morton will replace former Student Senate President Nick Southall on Wednesday following Southall’s resignation during break. Morton said his resignation contributed to the decision, but the situation had been heading downhill before.
“It’s a mix of both. I’m not really sure what conversations Nick had with his specific people but after Nick leaving and my transitioning ... it was clear to me that the concert was not feasible, it was poorly put together,” Morton said. “To me it wasn’t heading in the right direction.”
The real challenge was trying to book an act that could perform on the only evening available in The Convo — April 11 — the day before 12Fest, said Andrew Holzaepfel, associate director of the Campus Involvement Center.
“Only having one Friday to go to agents within the peak college season presents quite a challenge to find artists,” Holzaepfel said. “There are two or three weekends when every college is going after every artist and since we don’t have any flexibility on dates in The Convo this year there are some challenges.”
The concerts are also an expensive endeavor, costing the university $103,000 in surplus money from the multipurpose center last year and $20,000 after ticket sales from the Wiz Khalifa show in 2012 as reported on in previous Post articles.
Now Holzaepfel will be looking to fill more acts in the Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium this spring. Last year the center brought six musical acts to the auditorium for a total cost of $10,000 out of the Campus Involvement Center budget.
“I’m disappointed that it’s not going to work out but … it’s an expensive concert and we’d rather do it right than get an artist that isn’t going to be one that gets a lot of fanfare and wasn’t going to be well-received,” Lombardi said. “We’re going to start working on it and hopefully we can make it that much better of a show next year.”
wh0092010@ohiou.edu
@Wilbur_Hoffman
This article appeared in print under the headline "No big acts to perform at Ohio".
