Sparks fly as ASMSU, RHA fight for Common

A race to sign the same headlining artist for concerts this spring is the latest in a history of conflicts between two of MSU’s student bodies.

ASMSU, MSU’s undergraduate student government, and the Residence Halls Association, or RHA, simultaneously pursued Grammy Award-winning hip-hop artist Common for two separate events scheduled within about a week of one another.

RHA reached a contract with Common last week and tickets went on sale Friday for the April 10 concert at the Auditorium.

DeAndre Wright, RHA’s chief of staff, said confrontations between the two groups, including the race to book Common, are in the past.

Each organization serves an important role at the university to advocate student rights, and conflicts among the groups aren’t an important issue, he said.

“It’s just not really that big of a deal, to be honest,” Wright said. “I’ve learned that people and organizations have different ways of knowing things. Sometimes it happens that an organization protects their turf, so to speak, but at the end of the day, both organizations are out to advance what’s in the best interest of students.”

Event planners from each organization met with Cathy Neuman, assistant director for Student Life, in late February to discuss where each organization was in the contract process and how to proceed.

Nigel Scarlett, ASMSU’s Student Assembly vice chairperson for external affairs, and Anthony Carlo, RHA’s special events director, discussed the possibility of partnering for the project after Carlo was told Scarlett had a pending contract with Common.

However, Scarlett said a visit he had with Wright later proved the groups wouldn’t be able to work together. Wright told him RHA wasn’t interested in working with ASMSU.

“I thought we could work together, but obviously we couldn’t,” Scarlett said.

Scarlett said although there is conflict between the groups, it wasn’t affected by the concert.

“People have their mind set in a certain way, and the concert didn’t change anything. It’s just how people already thought,” Scarlett said.

Carlo said hearing ASMSU had a pending contract set back RHA’s contract finalizations with Common about two weeks and had him worried about completing the concert project on time.

“The worst-case scenario was ASMSU had the show and I was starting from scratch a month before my show date,” Carlo said.

But, a phone call to Common’s agent revealed the artist had not been notified of any interest from ASMSU, Carlo said.

Carlo said RHA will spend between $40,000 and $50,000 to bring Common to campus April 10. He said he was surprised ASMSU was pursuing Common with a quarter-million-dollar budget.

Scarlett said ASMSU was planning to bid about $50,000 for Common and immediately started looking at its backup artist after talking with Wright. The event’s budget was not exclusively for bringing a headliner such as Common to campus, he said.

“Common always was in the presentation (to ASMSU members), so it was public knowledge I was pursuing Common, but I had no way of knowing RHA was pursuing him,” Scarlett said.

Mark Dobson, president of RHA, said he was disappointed ASMSU made its pursuit of Common public.

“They discussed it openly and clearly in their meetings what was going on,” Dobson said.

Dobson said RHA has an agreement with Student Life to wait to release the name of concert artists until they have a signed contract.

“I was disappointed ASMSU was not being held to the same standards,” Dobson said.