Drama has continued to unfold as those directly and indirectly responsible for planning the Founders' Day Ball have traded endless recriminations with one another. 600 tickets originally available sold out within hours of going on sale, forcing almost 200 students onto a wait list. Many students expressed anger over the lack of tickets and the limited time they had been available.
Tensions erupted after "chatter about complaints surrounding Founders' Day Ball caught [an undergraduate senator's] ear." In response to student dissatisfaction, he crafted a bill that would expand the number of tickets available. The bill passed the Undergraduate Senate 18-2 and was, according to those who the bill targeted, "unfair," "unnecessary," and "slanderous." Now, after accusations and counter-accusations, an extra 200-250 tickets are being made available.
This much is clear - regardless of who is to blame, more tickets still need to be made available. The Founders' Day Ball is a celebration of AU's founding and, as a celebration of this school, should be open to at least one-fourth of the student body. The 600 tickets originally made available for sale fell extremely short of this fraction. To accommodate this number of students, different arrangements should have been made from the outset of planning for this event. Last year's Founders' Day Ball hosted 1,000 students; it makes little sense to cut the available tickets in half for a popular event. If cost was an issue, then the planners should have chosen a less expensive venue, or more money should have been made available from the outset.
Katzen Arts Center would have been a perfect venue for this event. Katzen is closer, cheaper, and a very pleasant venue, capable of hosting large numbers of students. Most importantly, events at Katzen can serve alcohol upon request, so the all-important open-bar would not have to have been compromised. According to Student Government Vice President Andrew Woods - who was responsible for supervising the planning of this event - a survey was given to students asking whether they preferred a traditional Ball held off-campus or a ball held in a cheaper venue. According to Woods, students clearly preferred a traditional ball. Despite what students said at the time, it is now clear that a larger, cheaper venue should have been chosen.
What is done is done, and we do not want to point any more fingers at anyone involved in this situation. Planning large events is an extremely difficult undertaking and we are thankful to those who sacrificed their time and put this event together. However it is clear that certain wrong decisions were made, decisions that could have been made correctly based on past experiences. We hope that lessons learned this year will be remembered for the next.
