After sponsoring this year’s fall welcome concert featuring Jason Derulo, the Missouri Students Association has decided not to sponsor a concert during Homecoming week. The decision was made after taking student interest and alumni involvement into consideration, MSA Director of Student Activities Katie Bickley said.
“The Alumni Association did approach us about doing (a Homecoming concert),” Bickley said. “We looked at the semester as a whole and evaluated whether it was really the best decision to be doing it because of the centennial Homecoming.”
Prior to serving as the DSA director, Bickley served as the chairwoman of the Concert Committee for two years. The Concert Committee has the largest budget of any group within DSA.
“We’re given a budget every single year for concerts,” Bickley said. “It’s really an evaluation of whether it is the best decision for students and a good use of student fees.”
According to Bickley, Homecoming concerts happen rarely at MU, with the last concert occurring four years ago. Last year, MSA designated $79,750 to the DSA for free student concerts. These concerts are paid for with student fees.
“We did expect to have more money for a potential event to do with the Alumni Association,” Bickley said. “We weren’t sure if it would be a concert or what else we would be looking at. We had talked about it and decided that a concert was an avenue to explore.”
According to Bickley, when MSA decides to hold a concert, the event is then promoted and funded by multiple organizations on campus. For the fall welcome concert, the Graduate Professional Council College Music Committee and the Panhellenic Association agreed to cohost the event with MSA.
“We offered to match what the Alumni Association would bring in,” Bickley said. “We do try to actively co-promote. Even though there are a number (of funding sources) for the concerts committee, there is a lot of a flexibility within it.”
While creating the yearly budget for MSA, Vice President Emily Moon made sure to create room for extra Homecoming activities.
“We thought we would be able to have enough for two concerts,” Moon said. “We went ahead and moved forward with the (Derulo) concert and subsequently we had to cut the other concert, which was really unfortunate because I think it was something that was really important to me and a lot of other students just because Homecoming is such a sacred time for us.”
The funds for the Homecoming concert were included in the original draft of the yearly budget but were later cut due to financial obligations within MSA.
“We had budgeted money for the concert,” MSA President Eric Woods said. “There were some old bills that had been passed by the Senate, but had not been paid and somewhere along the line there was a communication error and those bills didn’t get sent through the fiscal officer. In order to pay those bills, we had to cut the Homecoming concert because it had been budgeted with money from the previous year that was going to carry over.”
Woods said additional MSA-sponsored concerts would still be held throughout the year.
“We’re always planning events,” Woods said. “We’re always doing concerts. There will be no shortage of events this year.”
Bickley said though DSA is not sponsoring a concert for this year’s Homecoming, a larger concert later during the school year is still a possibility.
“We just want to use student fees wisely,” she said.
**Correction:**
The last Homecoming Concert was three years ago, not four years ago. The Maneater regrets the error.
