Members of the Warren College Council voted yesterday to hold a joint music festival with Sixth College instead of staging the annual Warren Live! concert. Sixth College’s fifth annual Kuncocshun festival will take place on May 8 in the Sixth College Quad.
Earlier this quarter, WCC President Colin Scholtz and members of the Warren Concert Commission decided to postpone Warren Live! until next fall after realizing the May 8 date was problematic.
‘We discovered that the day before was Warren Semiformal, and the day after was Transfer Admit Day,’ Warren Senator Katie Buzas said. ‘The staffing would have been shorthanded to do three events three days in a row. The Warren Concert Commission was under the impression that they would try to get a later date and that the contract wasn’t binding yet.’
However, because Associate Vice President of Programming Garrett Berg had already extended a formal offer to the headlining musical acts after being given the go-ahead by Warren Concert Commission Chair Eric Mendoza, A.S. programming was no longer willing to renegotiate the date of the festival.
‘We had actually outbid another venue in San Diego to get an artist, and felt obliged to book the commitments,’ AVP of Athletic Relations Peter Benesch said. ‘It became an issue of reputation. One of the reasons A.S. was helping out the college councils was to improve its reputation, but Warren was taking actions that would hurt that reputation. [The decisions] were made behind closed doors. We didn’t know this was happening; only the Warren president and concert commissioner knew.’
Scholtz said the heart of the problem was miscommunication.
‘Given the information presented, we came to the decision that we could postpone it, and we were under the impression that there would be no financial repercussion,’ Scholtz said. ‘As much as I have to reiterate this, there was bad communication on all sides.’
Late last month, Berg contacted Sixth College Coordinator of Student Activities Jenelle Dean to suggest that the Sixth College Council co-sponsor the event with Warren, since Kuncocshun had been planned for the same date.
‘[The Sixth College Council] reached out to Warren councilmembers a couple of times and asked if they would like to do a joint event,’ Sixth Senator John Cressey said. ‘We were denied at all times.’
Unsure of whether the Warren College Council was still opposed to combining the two festivals, A.S. councilmembers voted last Wednesday to allocate $13,671.26 from their mandate reserves to pay the headliners they had booked for Warren Live!.
The lineup has not yet been released to the public.
‘When A.S. funded the money for Sixth on Wednesday, it became completely obvious that most of WCC didn’t know what was going on, and they hadn’t been offered the opportunity to decide,’ Cressey said. ‘They said ‘no’ initially under false pretenses, and due to lack of knowledge about what was going on.’
Buzas and Warren College Senator Pam Sran called for an informal meeting with Berg, Sholtz and AVP of Student Advocacy Frank Carroll on April 24. There, they decided that Warren College should combine its festival with the Sixth College festival.
‘It was a really messy situation,’ Sran said. ‘It was kind of a major lack of communication on all three parties’ parts.’
In accordance with yesterday’s vote, the Warren College Council will reimburse the A.S. Council for the money used to pay for the bands, as well as pay for upgraded stage and security costs.
The Sixth College Council had already booked several musical acts before the decision to merge with the Warren College festival, all of which will still be performing at Kuncocshun next month.
‘Sixth planned the entire event,’
Cressey said. ‘We were offered the opportunity to take those bands and tack them onto the event. We wouldn’t have the budget regularly to put those bands on.’
Readers can contact Yelena Akopian at [email protected].