On Wednesday, March 30, SCOPE held their Spring Weekend Artist reveal. This is where they reveal the comedian and concert headliners after much student anticipation. Students gathered together in Bartels and listened to music played by WNHU, made predictions while anticipation rose. Then SCOPE revealed the movie (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), a carnival performance (Boston Circus Guild), the comedian (Streeter Seidell and headliner Aidy Bryant) and the concert (Pros and Icons, Todrick Hall, and headliner Andy Grammer) via a YouTube video.
Numerous students are thrilled with the comedian and concert headliners. While there are many students expressing their excitement on Twitter, an abundance of students are being beyond disrespectful towards UNH, SCOPE, and the concert headliner Andy Grammer. Comments like “Andy Grammer better not come to UNH, or else,” were seen on YikYak after the reveal (which, by the way–What exactly are they threatening? Are they going to throw a textbook at him?). There were a number of tweets sent out, expressing disappointment in the rudest ways possible. “I should just join SCOPE so we get someone we actually want,” (It doesn’t work that way); “UNH thought Andy Grammer would be good? I know what I’m not doing that day,” (Oh no. I am heart broken. Really, we will all miss you and your rudeness); and “Who even is Andy Grammer? Why is he coming here?” (He’s coming to teach you how to be nice to others, please take notes) were just a few of the tweets sent out.
Students have tagged both SCOPE and UNH in posts, stating that students would rather go to “rival” SCSU spring concert than attend ours, and that “they should spend our money more wisely.” Well, I don’t feel like we would be missing out if they did go to SCSU, so please go.
On another note, to these negative commenters, I just have one thing to say: Who the hell raised you? Honestly. You clearly have no manners. Did mommy and daddy really give you everything you wanted growing up to the point that not having your favorite artist for a free concert is the end of the world? And don’t tell me that you pay $50,000 for this concert. It’s free. And there are 4,000 students here and not everyone can be happy; in fact, I didn’t know the last three concert headliners. You know what I did? I was happy my friends were happy, I didn’t complain, I appreciated the hard work that went into the weekend, I didn’t get a ticket and I let the fans go to the concert. I went to the events I would enjoy. Take note. I didn’t complain. I didn’t hurt the feelings of the people who put months and months of work into the event, nor did I threaten a celebrity because I didn’t get my way.
The amount of students that took to public forums to express their feelings in such a way represents our university so poorly. There is one thing about expressing your dissapoint; that is fine, and feelings are always validated. But to personally attack people and whine about it like a 5-year-old who can’t eat a chocolate bar before dinner isn’t appropriate for college students. Especially while tagging the artists in the posts, because now all they see is that we are a group of college aged students who act like preschoolers instead of adults and professionals such as those students who they had been in contact with this entire time to plan this event.
So here is some advice. If you are happy about the artists: good. Enjoy the weekend, and say thank you to SCOPE because they worked extremely hard on this. If you aren’t– don’t go. I’m sure you can have just as much fun marinating your liver in alcohol in your bedroom (because really that’s what most people do during Spring Weekend) and not ruining the event for everyone else.
John Treastman • Apr 7, 2016 at 10:17 am
It seems like the author simply has a problem with anybody who is at all disappointed with the choice for headliner, not even necessarily the rude ones, going as far as infantilizing them and calling them “5 year olds” who want chocolate? So, people can’t be disappointed?
It would be one thing if the author had written this article to criticize some of the vitriolic comments, but she seems to have a problem with anybody saying another school’s concert is better or making fun of the choice in any way. Most of the University of New Haven was extremely displeased by this choice. To even argue that the disappointed folks are some small majority is untrue at best, nefarious at worst. Stop belittling people’s opinions and comments by writing them off as “rude.”
The truth is, yes, people do need to get over it–but it was a bad choice. He’s not an artist that connects with students at our age or in our demographic. Also, it’s nobody’s fault but the author that they “didn’t know” T-Pain and Third Eye Blind (not top choices, but you’d have to be living under a mountain of rocks to not “know” them).
And to the part about “marinating” our livers in alcohol. Really? This is the only college I’ve ever seen where people are judged and shamed for drinking alcohol like all other college students. This author must be some sort of Greek stoic. Seriously though, puritanism and condescension is not good for anyway.
Nice opinion article. You have your opinion, and the rest of us have ours. Unfortunately, we’re not all in the position to espouse ours in the school newspaper, and if anybody wrote a freelance article explaining the OVERWHELMING disappointment, I’m sure this paper wouldn’t have approved it. How about instead of putting out some rude opinion-based piece that is condescending to the majority of the student body, you put out a news article showing how disappointed most students were, and how overwhelmingly upset many of us were? No, you’d rather misrepresent the entire issue and undercut everybody’s opinions.