ViCE responds to students' criticism

Take a look back at the week in arts and entertainment at Vassar: Three Brooklyn DJs blasted dance mixes in Matthew's Mug on Thursday, the popular independent romantic comedy Away We Go was screened in Blodgett Hall on Friday and Saturday, an eight-piece jazz band called Rubblebucket jammed the night away on Tuesday, and exactly one week ago it was announced that The Flaming Lips are coming to Poughkeepsie. It may come as a surprise that this diverse slew of events is attributable to the work of a single student organization: Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE).
"ViCE does a lot," said President of ViCE Peter Denny '10. "In the broadest sense, we are a large part of what defines college culture here."

The student-run behemoth is a certified Vassar Student Association (VSA) organization with a mission statement to provide entertainment for the student community. Currently, "entertainment" encompasses jazz nights, Mug nights, student singer-songwriter performances, comedians, DJs, movie screenings and a variety of musical concerts from hip-hop to alternative.

Every week sees a variety of events planned by the large-scale organization come to pass. Although the group lives up to its mission statement in terms of the quantity of entertainment it provides, it has come under criticism from the student body for the way it goes about providing it. A survey conducted by the VSA earlier this semester indicated that students perceived the organization negatively for a variety of reasons: exclusivity, disregard for student input, elitism and "hipster" tastes in their programming, and an opaque committee system.

"The most frustrating thing for me is that we are considered exclusive," said Denny in response to the survey's results. "It's not true at all. There's nothing stopping people from coming to meetings."

Each of ViCE's committee meetings meet once a week in ViCE's office in the College Center. Each of ViCE's seven committees meet at different times in the evening to plan events and receive input from students. Every committee is tasked with organizing different aspects of college entertainment: Film League is responsible for the weekly movie screenings in the Blodgett Hall Auditorium, NoViCE focuses on the unconventional arts and music scene, After Hours is devoted to student singer-songwriters, Music plans larger-scale concerts, Jazz represents instrumental music, Special Events covers extraneous entertainment and Publicity markets all of the approved ideas.

"When we are trying to represent the student body, that's ideally going to involve as many students as possible," said Denny. "When people say, ‘You don't bring music I like,' I say, ‘Go to the meetings!'"

"We definitely work with the committees first; it's not the executive board making the decisions," added Music Committee Chair Christine Yu '10.

Another problem plaguing ViCE is students' perception of them as a "hipster" organization, since the musical artists they bring to campus are often independent and relatively unknown. The results of the VSA survey indicated that students with different tastes in music felt underrepresented.

VSA Vice President for Activities Aaron Grober '11 refuted this criticism: "I think that the perception of ViCE is in interesting contrast with those involved in it. What they try to do is answer to a wide palette of musical tastes."

"I definitely think that calling us ‘hipster' is a big misconception," said Yu. "We have all kinds of tastes of music on the committee."

The organization has consistently emphasized a focus on the generic diversity of their events. This year's two main concerts featured hip-hop and alternative artists, and the upcoming Flaming Lips show will fall under the category of pop-rock. This musical diversity, says Denny, makes up for the inability to get non-independent artists.

"No matter what, we could never get Beyoncé or Rihanna," said Denny. "It's just not within our price range."

"I know that people are upset that we don't have Lady Gaga coming," said Grober. "That's just outlandish. I don't know where they're coming from."

Another counter to ViCE's perceived elitism is that the up-and-coming bands that they bring often end up attaining mainstream recognition. For example, when the electronic band Passion Pit played alongside Broken Social Scene in September 2008, they had only just released their first EP. Less than a year after that, the band began receiving extensive media attention for its debut album Manners and even managed to chart some of their music.

"It's a good lesson to look back at the music we've brought in the past and see how much success they've had since," said Denny. "We have these bands playing a small independent show here before they play in stadiums and arenas."

As a large organization that receive a significant amount of student activities fee funds through the VSA, budgetary criticism of ViCE has become especially relevant in light of the recently announced spring concert. Students who were already upset over the disproportionate amount of VSA funding the organization receives annually were further angered by the fact that they would have to pay money to see The Flaming Lips come April 17.

"ViCE has a very sizeable budget," said Grober. "But it's not like all of their money goes to their concerts. [The VSA was] working with them to do a show bigger than before, and a bigger name and bigger venue is expensive."

Both Grober and Denny emphasize that although the concert isn't free, a large part of the Music Committee's budget went to subsidizing the ticket prices for Vassar students.
"We tried to be sensitive to people's needs, so we tried to keep the ticket prices low," said Denny. "But the price of entertainment is very expensive."

Despite the negative perception that plagues the organization, they attempt to overcome misconceptions by welcoming participation with open arms. "Anybody is welcome to join at any time of the year," said Yu. "Nobody should be afraid of ViCE."