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.
Published on Monday, March 17, 2008
Comments
Kevin
03/18/08 @ 12:24am
This should have read:
Nigel Scarlett, who is currently charged with rape, was caught in a blatant lie that he told to both ASMSU and MSU’s Department of Student Life. Scarlett led ASMSU, RHA and the Department of Student Life believe that he was on the verge of signing a major contract with Grammy award winning artist Common, but his disregard for the truth was exposed when Common’s agent revealed he had “never heard of him.” Adding to Scarlett’s misery was the revelation that while he was pretending to offer $250,000 of student tax dollars, Common was more than willing to play a show at MSU for under $50,000.
“Perhaps Nigel was distracted by his pending jail time,” said John Doe, a Sociology Senior.
anon
03/18/08 @ 1:23am
Kevin,
While I am not a strong supporter of Nigel, I do want to set the record straight. Nigel never, at any time, represented that the artists he was pursuing would cost the entire $250,000. That number has been widely spread, and picked up on, but it simply represents the maximum dollar amount that could be allocated for an event. The number was originally reached during the discussion of creating a large 3-5 day event centered around advocacy week, voter registration and ivote. Also, the $50,000 that the artist would cost does not include the venue costs, sound/lighting costs, DPPS costs, security costs, transportation costs, catering costs…the list goes on and on for a event/artist like this. Trust me, RHA’s costs well exceed $50,000. ASMSU chose to earmark enough money to allow for that type of planning, should it evolve, without having to go back again and again to reallocate dollars.
Having said that, Nigel made terrible mistakes and should no longer continue in his position for a number of reasons.
anon 2
03/18/08 @ 3:01am
I also would like to tell ppl that Mark Dobson is definately the type of person who would try and bring common once he heard ASMSU was trying. I have worked with him before and know that it is always his goal to bring ASMSU down, which is really unfortunate that people do not know the truth about him and RHAs inappropriate and deliberate acts of tension.
Thomas
03/18/08 @ 9:41am
Wow, what a bunch of egos.
Shouldn’t you people know that student government is the worst kind of government. You don’t do ANYTHING. It’s a waste of my “fees”, and I wish I didn’t have to pay either group. If I meet someone who enjoys spending their free time in college attending student government meetings, I know you are probably a loser.
Jason
03/18/08 @ 10:12am
It should be noted that the ASMSU Common Concert was going to be FREE for students. How much is the RHA one going to cost…?
DeAndre Wright
03/18/08 @ 10:30am
Jason (and all others),
Student tickets for the Common concert is listed at $15 and the public ticket price is $20. If you’re interested, they can be purchased at www.whartoncenter.com
Because we don’t have an exceedingly large budget for our special events, we do indeed charge prices for most of our concerts. However, in setting those ticket prices we usually go for the lowest ticket price possible. We don’t set out to make a profit but to simply break even.
This also allows us to bring more and different types of talent to campus. For example, the Will Ferrell show cost a great deal of money. But less than maybe $200 in miscellaneous expenses left any of our accounts because we were able to charge a moderate ticket price (which was lower than most other colleges/universities that had Will Ferrell – only 8 in total) to cover all of the expenses for the show. That way people that are interested in going can go and we can free up funds in our budget to provide other services that would appeal to other students.
Our special events philosophy is to provide the best possible experience for our students at a relatively low cost. Take a look at our repertoire of special events and you’ll see a great deal of low cost talent that RHA has brought to campus.
Sweet Post Thomas
03/18/08 @ 10:50am
Yes, student government folks are losers, the only person worse is those who post anonymous comments on the student newspaper’s website. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to let us know that. Keep up the good work.
annon
03/18/08 @ 11:46am
To those complaining about fees. You are entitled to request them back.
To this ‘controversy’. ASMSU needs to clean up its own affairs before getting in futile sparing matches. Based on the information provided from a generally unreliable source, namely the snews, it appears obvious that the claims of a contract with ASMSU are false and potentially an attempt at distraction
annon
03/18/08 @ 11:46am
To those complaining about fees. You are entitled to request them back.
To this ‘controversy’. ASMSU needs to clean up its own affairs before getting in futile sparing matches. Based on the information provided from a generally unreliable source, namely the snews, it appears obvious that the claims of a contract with ASMSU are false and potentially an attempt at distraction
annon
03/18/08 @ 11:47am
To those complaining about fees. You are entitled to request them back.
To this ‘controversy’. ASMSU needs to clean up its own affairs before getting in futile sparing matches. Based on the information provided from a generally unreliable source, namely the snews, it appears obvious that the claims of a contract with ASMSU are false and potentially an attempt at distraction
Brian
03/19/08 @ 12:36am
I must say, I am disappointed in ASMSU. While the concert may have been free, one must ask if spendind a quarter of a million student dollars on 2 concerts is neccessarily appropriate spending, while RHA has had 3 artists so far with a fourth on the way. As far as the Mark Dobson comment, why would he care when Anthony Carlo does all of RHA’s contracts, and if Nigel Scarlett had been truthful in the first place, this wouldn’t be an issue. FUrthermore, I think it speaks volumes of Scarlett’s integrity when he tells MSU officials, and fellow students that he had a contract signed when he hadn’t even talked to the agent. It appears to me that this article is no more than an attempt to shift the focus of the people off of ASMSU’s troubles, and discredit RHA, a group that does a lot of good on this campus, like the Movie Offices where resident hall students cann rent free movies, and Campus Center, where they can go see a movie and enjoy popcorn for free.