Chappelle brings mass appeal to campus

It's been a couple of years since a big-name comedian performed at IU as a guest of the Union Board.\nBut that dry spell will be broken tonight when Dave Chappelle, star of the cult movie favorite "Half-Baked" and a standup comedian, takes the stage at the IU Auditorium.\nUB Comedy Director Meg DeTore, a senior, said that in recent years, UB had focused on attracting musical acts, a fact that led to the recent comedy drought. But a newly-formed comedy committee began working last spring to attract popular comedians to campus. \n"When the board assembled in January, we noticed a void on campus in terms of big name comedy," UB President Vaughn Allen, a senior, said of the new committee's creation.\nDeTore said the new committee was given the flexibility and financial ability it needed to do its job, and the result is Chappelle.\n"We wanted to bring a large-name performer to campus," she said. "We wanted to meet a need that wasn't being met."\nDeTore said an upcoming IU performance by comedy legend George Carlin, the first host of "Saturday Night Live," will appeal to baby boomers and older adults. That's why attracting a younger comedian like Chappelle was so important as well, she said.\n"We made a list of comedians who would appeal to college students, and we tossed around other big names, but we felt Dave Chappelle was someone different," she said.\nTonight's show is also being sponsored by the Black Student Union. DeTore said UB made an effort to appeal to a wide spectrum of IU students.\n"Diversity has always been a part of Union Board's philosophy," she said. "We wanted a show that catered to a diverse audience."\nChappelle is glad that he has been able to build a multi-cultural fan base.\n"I got a lot of white fans," Chappelle recently told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "It's cool, man, because it means I'm getting my point across without offending anyone. The people out there understand. It's like Richard Pryor -- his whole angle was his black experience, but he had a way of making people understand it, because it's a human experience."\nAllen hopes that Chappelle's performance will provide his audience with a brief distraction from recent global events.\n"Hopefully, he'll make life fun again for a couple of hours," he said.