Much to everyone’s disappointment, the Girl Talk and Big Boi concert was shut down prematurely two weeks ago due to too many noise complaints from our University Park neighbors. The community was warned about the concert, but unfortunately the University Park Police Department has the ultimate say, and they said no.
Most people are dwelling on the negatives and how upset they are that Girl Talk didn’t perform. I am going to inject a little bit of positivity into this bummer of an event so we can hopefully build on this for next year.
I have been Program Council’s concert chair for the past two years, and in those two years the Spring Concert has been held outdoors. My reasoning for this: we have a beautiful campus, one that we rarely embrace or take advantage of. I understand that we are inconveniently located smack in the middle of a residential neighborhood, but I figured that our neighbors would be understanding until 10 p.m. for just one evening. Many of them were, and I appreciate those that supported the event and even reached out to me the day after the concert was shut down.
We got all of the permission we needed and the police were informed that this event was going on. Their response: they knew that they would get phone calls complaining about the noise, and they would tell the callers that the event would be over at 10 p.m.. This didn’t seem to happen. The police have the right to shut down an event, and they used that right, claiming that this concert was a “breach of the peace.”
People have been saying we put the stage in the worst possible position on campus. Virtually our only option on the SMU campus was Doak Walker Plaza, so we went with it. Lesson learned for next time. Others are saying we should have put the concert indoors—but think about Big Boi and Girl Talk in, say, McFarlin Auditorium: awkward.
What we all seem to keep forgetting is the fact that Big Boi had an unbelievable 45-minute set. From where I was standing backstage, everyone looked to be having the time of his or her life. We attracted close to 1,400 people to Doak Walker Plaza on a Thursday night—and I’m sure we would have reached well over that number had the concert kept going. This was a crowd made up of students and (thanks to the Dallas Observer) fellow Dallasites. Please tell me when in the past four years we have had that many people come out for anything. As much as we don’t like to admit it, SMU is a split student body, and if I have learned anything over these past four years, it’s that it’s near impossible to please all of the conflicting interests on this campus. News spread about this concert and it spread fast. We had every type of student out there on Thursday night, and I’m incredibly happy about that. I’m right there with you when I say I’m disappointed at the way the concert turned out, but I don’t regret any of it.
I want to thank every single one of you that came out to support the Program Council Spring Concert last week. Hopefully in the future SMU and its surrounding residents can come to some sort of agreement or understanding so that we can have just one night of good, solid fun on our campus.
Brooke Morin is a senior journalism major and is the concert chair for Program Council. She can be reached for comment at [email protected].
