English senior Amanda McClintock was a little nervous Friday night at Lower Level Records, 611 E. Grand River Ave., Suite 100, when she heard that one of the bands performing at a benefit show for “Students for a Free Tibet” was having trouble locating one of its members.
That fear was quickly diminished when 9:00 p.m. rolled around (the show was originally slated to begin at 8:00 p.m.) and local rockers “this is adelaide” played a set much to the approval of the crowd.
“We’ve done benefit shows before, but we’ve been trying to find a place that would do all-ages shows, because a lot of people on campus are not over 21,” said McClintock, co-president of the organization.
“We were really excited when Lower Level opened, because you could have an all-ages show here and Dan (Falconer, owner of Lower Level Records) was nice enough to let us.”
Falconer thought it was a good idea to put on the benefit show at his store.
“Being for a good cause and everything with it being a student-run organization, we thought it would be a good way to have a show,” he said.
Other bands who rocked the crowd included Detroit-based “B” and “NYMB,” a band from Chicago.
“The bands are into doing stuff like this,” said psychology freshman Amber Butas, member of Students For A Free Tibet. “I think with the type of bands these are, they’re really into helping causes like this out.”
“this is adelaide” has performed numerous times for “Students for a Free Tibet.”
“It’s nice to have a local band that people like who can help us out,” McClintock said.
Two petitions were also circulating throughout the crowd during the concert.
Horticulture junior Jeff Corliss said one of the petitions was to prevent drilling for oil.
Corliss, a member of “Students for a Free Tibet,” said the other petition contained ten factors of what’s happening in the environment in general, including deforestation.
McClintock, a member of the group for two years, said the primary goal of the organization is education.
“We want to educate the public on what’s going on in Tibet and I can speak from a personal experience that I really had no idea of the tremendous amount of human rights violations going on,” she said.
“It’s been quite a learning experience, and once you go to a few meetings and you read about it and educate yourself, it’s pretty easy to get involved.”
McClintock said they cover all sorts of issues including women’s rights, environmental issues and children’s rights.
“I think a lot of kids who listen to this type of music that is played at benefit shows are really into one certain aspect of social injustice,” Butas said. “So that just seems to sum it all up. There’s so much wrong going on over there.”
McClintock said there are probably 20 to 30 core members who regularly make the meetings and roughly 200 on the mailing list.
She said that having benefit shows are very helpful in getting the word out about the group.
“Every time we have a benefit show we have more people ask questions and that’s the best way to find out about us, which is our main goal,” McClintock said. “Basically it’s just MSU students. But we’ve had a few outside students from Lansing Community College and even some who weren’t students at all.”
Meetings for the MSU Chapter of “Students for a Free Tibet” are Tuesday nights from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the Union Students are asked to check the Union Daily schedule for room assignment.
For more information about the group, visit www.msu.edu/~msutibet.
