Rockapella of the Coca-Cola and Folgers commercial fame. Aimee Mann who just appeared on the “Last Kiss” soundtrack. Gideon Yago who frequents MTV News. Steve Tyrell whose album might sit in your parents’ car.
These are just a few of the speakers and musical acts that have been lined up to appear at the Quick Center for the Arts this year. While these acts are large names that students might want to see, students feel that they haven’t been publicized as much as they should be.
Molly Forbes ’07 wishes she had known about Rockapella, who came to perform in early October.
“I feel like I don’t know about a lot of the acts that come to the Quick Center,” Forbes said. “I know we get a lot of e-mails about it but my inbox is flooded with e-mails. I usually just delete all of them.”
Jill Nusio ’07 agreed.
“I feel like I notice posters so much more than I do my StagWeb announcements, but I also don’t really feel like they [Quick Center] reach out to us,” she said.
Those in charge of programming and public relations for the Quick Center disagree that the events for the 2006-2007 are geared more towards members of the town of Fairfield rather than the audience of university students.
Deborah Sommers, director of programming for the Quick Center, said that there are many different reasons students don’t know about Quick Center events.
“It’s a mixture of a lot of things that we have seen for over 15 years,” said Sommers. “Students have told me [that] it’s the student’s night to go out, they don’t read their e-mails because there are too many of them and we’re not allowed to stuff mailboxes. Many students feel we don’t have the acts here they want to see so they don’t bother looking on our website.”
Students however, feel it is the opposite. “I went last night actually to the Theatre Fairfield production,” said Aaron Rude ’08. “Last year I went to see a famous guitarist at the Quick Center.”
Rude instead wishes that the Quick Center would make more of an effort than just e-mails on StagWeb, but also wishes students would make an effort to read them.
“They [Quick Center] send out an e-mail, like look at our poster. Students are like, ‘Quick Center. Oh, dumb’,” Rude said.
Joan Grant, the Quick Center’s publicist, sees there might be a problem in how students receive their information. “I really feel like there is a clog in getting information out to the students,” she said.
This could in fact be true. When asked, many students did not know that they have the opportunity to receive half price tickets for all shows at the Quick Center.
Shows that are normally $50 or $40 would be half price with a student ID. The theater even has a “rush ticket policy” that would allow students to get tickets the day of the non-sold out show for only $5.
While this is public knowledge, not many students are aware of it.
Even with these great deals, students still don’t seem to be coming to the Quick Center for events.
Rude hopes that this will change in the future. “This University has a lot to offer. It’s just about people knowing it. There are so many resources students don’t tap into.”
Sommers agrees that communication is a problem, but feels that advertising just isn’t bringing the students to events.
“Communication is always a problem in that in combination we have taken ads out in the Mirror every week, brochures are sent home to the freshmen [and] we have also put up posters, flyers and materials around the school. Sometimes for every event we have tried all in those combinations. It still didn’t bring students from Fairfield to the events,” she said.
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