So, you want to put on a performance at Cohen Auditorium? Great.
All you need is about $1,000 to rent the space. But then don't forget about all of the staff who will be there to sell tickets, clean up and set up the equipment — not to mention the costs for strobe lights, the CD player, video cameras, microphones, programs and posters. By the end, you will be looking at a long list of rental, AV and maintenance fees that could potentially cost $6,000 per show.
After the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate approved it last spring, a new policy has put in place this year stating that Tufts groups cannot charge other Tufts students for admission, many of the performance groups are left scratching their heads trying to figure out how to tackle such daunting rental figures while still putting on the best show at their greatest possible ability.
With a budget of roughly $13,000 and Cohen Auditorium's rental costs for two performances at nearly $12,000, the Spirit of Color (SoC) dance troupe, along with several other performance groups at Tufts, faces a budgeting dilemma in the wake of the new guidelines.
"We pretty much have enough [funding] to reserve Cohen [and] pay for the labor costs, but other than that we don't really have any other money to afford anything else other than have a show," said junior Jamie Gang, the director of SoC. "We pretty much have to front costumes on our own. We basically have the bare minimum."
Some students argue that because a portion of the rental money goes right back to Tufts University, the costs are unjustly expensive. Associate Director of Campus Life Laura DaRos addressed this argument as a complete misperception.
"We want the students to be able to have events on campus," DaRos said. "The money allotted to the groups go [sic] right back towards the student workers, paying for the metal detectors and things like that. Also, when groups hold events, they are required to distribute [tickets] through the info booth and the prices go towards booth staff, the licensing for the computer program, rather than back to some account."
TCU Treasurer Aaron Bartel affirmed DaRos' statements.
"When a group rents Cohen, the Cohen box office doesn't give us anything," Bartel said. "It wouldn't even make sense because in effect it just reduces the cost of the event; it would just go back to groups' budgets anyway."
Still, many of the performance groups are affected this year by the sudden change in the current budgets from past years'.
"I totally understand why the budget is a lot less flexible now, but I do wish that we were given more preparation. The groups themselves should have been told what exactly was going to change," Gang said. "Right now, SoC is stuck in a tight situation. We might only be able to afford one show per semester, when we usually have two. What are we going to do? Have a bake sale every week?"
Bartel acknowledged the small amount of wiggle room that several groups face.
"[The performance groups] weren't as informed as they should have been," Bartel said. "Nobody had the intention of doing this, but in hindsight what would have been better was to pull all the performance groups together and have a meeting to ask them how they feel and how comfortable they feel about this rather than just issuing a mandate. The price of renting spaces is expensive, which is unfortunate, but that is ... just what individual spaces cost."
The new guidelines likely will force performance groups to reexamine their costs and to approach their budgets in different ways. But Bartel emphasized that even in the worst-case scenario, the TCU policy could be changed back to what it has been in the past.
"Some people might think it's phenomenal and some people might think it might hurt their group," Bartel said. "The important thing is that if it doesn't work out this year, we can always go back to how it was done last year."
Despite difficulties with the changes, Tufts students, performance groups, representatives and faculty seem to agree on the good intentions of the new TCU policy and remain optimistic despite the new constraints.
"Technically, Tufts is paying for the space because it's allotted in our budget, and Cohen spots are so expensive, so it's kind of hard to avoid all of [the costs]," Gang said. "Still, I do think that Tufts students should be able to see their fellow students perform without having to pay."
"I think that students should be able to go to all the things that they want," DaRos said. "It's more like the Tufts community providing entertainment for the Tufts community."
