Spring Weekend is perhaps the biggest event of the year at the University of New Haven, bigger than Homecoming, Alumni Weekend or any other weekend set aside for student activities. Spring Weekend is so popular because it is student’s segway into summer, one last hoorah before we suffer through finals and then make the trek home for the next three months.

UNH prides itself on hosting an entertaining, safe, fun-filled weekend with something to offer students with a wide variety of interests; there’s a comedian, a carnival, a concert and a drive in. In the past, as weather gets warmer and the talk of who will be performing at spring weekend becomes a frequent topic of conversation on the quad, students were ready and excited. However, this year, for the 4500 students who will be excluded from the concert due to sold out tickets, the feeling of excitement was replaced with frustration and rage.

By this point, I am sure everyone knows that ticket sales for this year’s spring weekend concert, where Third Eye Blind and T-Pain will be performing, sold out at a record breaking rate and were gone by the end of the first day of sales, Monday, April 13. Rightfully so, the students who didn’t have the opportunity to get a ticket to the concert on Monday due to prior commitments were disappointed, to say the least. My question is, why, at a school of six thousand students, are there only fifteen hundred tickets available and why were they all sold on the same day?

Members of student organizations who put on this concert took to Facebook to quickly defend themselves from angry, ticketless students, saying that it isn’t their fault that there aren’t enough tickets and placing the blame on those who chose the venue, the Charger Gymnasium, and its capacity limit. I agree, I don’t think the blame should be placed solely on one organization, but I am confused as to why a solution is still not in place for everyone to get a chance to see the concert.

It is extremely unfair that over half of the students that attend UNH have to miss out on the biggest event of the year. We all pay an extremely high tuition rate to attend UNH and are often told that some of our tuition money goes to funding these events for students. Well if that’s the case, shouldn’t everyone who is funding Spring Weekend, all 6000 students, be able to attend the event they are basically paying for?

The first mistake made regarding spring weekend was choosing to hold the concert in the Charger Gymnasium. There are many other venues in which the concert could be held that would allow more students to attend. To name a few, the Rec Center, the Quad, Kayo Field or the football field; we have all these amenities at UNH that could be potential venues for the concert so why are we choosing the smallest one with the lowest capacity?

The second mistake was the ticket distribution process. It was not fair that all tickets were sold in one day. What about the students who have long commutes and couldn’t make it to campus during the time tickets were sold? Or the students who have jobs and couldn’t take time off of work to stand in line for a ticket? Or the students who prioritized class over entertainment and didn’t skip to get a ticket only to be punished for it? If there were only 1500 tickets, they should have sold 500 three days a week, so everyone had an opportunity to make time to get one.

Finally, the fact that there is only one showing is a mistake in and of itself. At bigger schools that have to accommodate for a much larger population, they do multiple showings of concerts so everyone can go. So how come at UNH only 1500 students were accommodated instead of the whole population?

If the venue must remain the same then there should be at least two showings so at least half of the population can attend.

Any of these would be viable solutions to the problems regarding the spring concert. Some people wait all year for this one weekend of fun and it is wrong to simply say oh well, better luck next year. Every student at UNH should be able to enjoy the concert, all 6000 of us, not just 1500 and that would be possible if these solutions were taken into consideration.