Gallery piece

OPINION COLUMN

Live from Bloomington squandered your money as it fell into utter disrepair this year.

Live from Bloomington, one of Union Board’s 13 active programming committees, endorsed and carried out musical mishap after mishap this past year.

Union Board claims that one of its main priorities is to keep students’ interest in mind at all times. To assure this, the board tries to be fiscally responsible – a good policy when your budget is $332,260.

Unfortunately, they tried and failed.

The best example of Live from Bloomington’s failure is the Chairlift fiasco.

LFB brought Chairlift, a Brooklyn-based electronic pop music group that recently became popular after its song “Bruises” appeared in an iPod commercial, to Bloomington on Nov. 1.

This performance failure was clear from its incipient stages. LFB booked Chairlift for $750, although the Windish agent representing the band only sought $500, according to current LFB assistant director Robby Racette.

As an avid fan of Feist and her performance at the IU auditorium last year, I cannot help but think that LFB tried to recapture some of its former glory. Last year, LFB hosted the successful and highly enjoyable Feist show. Feist – the singer-songwriter and member of the indie-rock group Broken Social Scene – performed a beautiful set with vivid on stage theatrics.

Of course, her song “1234” was the most popular song of the night, as it elicited the most popular applause. “1234” was used an iPod commercial last year. Maybe LFB thought that Chairlift would be just as successful as Feist because of their similar iPod promotion. Turns out Chairlift was a flop. Union Board lost about $1,000 on Chairlift, with only about 100 attendees at the show, Racette said.

I think LFB languished, and I hope Racette will reform Union Board as a director next year.

 According to Racette’s platform, he found student opinion of Union Board became pessimistic and heard students think that it is narrow-minded and monotonous.
 
Because of this, he “will make every effort to accept criticism and engage these students by welcoming them to (his) committee so we can address these problems.”

I will vote for Racette because he promises to fight against bureaucracy.

Currently, Union Board is structured like a corrupt republic susceptible to political malfeasance and stifling quagmires of Byzantine bureaucracy. There are no impeachment processes, no recalls and no committee oversight protocols. In short, Union Board is governed by 16 directors/senators and a quadumvirate of non-student directors.

Racette will reform Union Board.

Sophomore John Seasly said he believes Racette already invests a great deal of time and efforts into planning future events.

“Robby encouraged me to set up a Facebook group as a petition to bring the group Of Montreal here to IU,” Seasly said. “In less than two weeks, it included over 900 members, and caught the attention of both the Residence Halls Association and the current Union Board Concerts Director.”

Seasly’s Facebook group is called “Of Montreal at Little 5, anyone? HELP ME SAVE KEVIN!!!” Please join and vote for Racette between 5 p.m. today and 5 p.m. Wednesday at http://ub.indiana.edu.