MAC no longer asking for student input (2019)
In light of the recent release of the E-Days theme and the events, it seems like MAC is no longer asking the student body what it wants in terms of these events. E-Days is a hallowed event that brings students together and lets us relax for a single weekend. This event involves concerts that have (in the past) been at least voted on by the students and not even having the chance to put in an opinion makes it seem like MAC knows what is best for the student body. We should be able to decide how we want to spend our E-Days, not a select group of students that think they know best.
Another concern is the talk of fees being attached to some of the historically free events during E-Days such as the carnival. I know its probably tempting to rake in the cash from students just trying to have a little fun, but these events make it possible for EVERY student to participate, especially if they don't have $40+ to shell out for a concert they don't even want to see. If MAC doesn't start to care more about what the student body wants, the participation in their events is going to plummet and the last fun event at Mines will just be another way for the school to siphon away more money from its students.
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Anonymous commented
Could we possibly get an E-days exit survey? I myself have feedback and I know many of my friends do as well. This may help the E-days chairs in the future and would be the most effective way to get campus wide feedback.
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Lauren Wilson commented
Good Morning,
My name is Lauren and I am this year’s MAC president. I appreciate you expressing your concerns regarding E-Days and the value you place in maintaining it as one of the highlights of Mines. I promise that is our goal as well, so it is disappointing to hear that you believe we do not value the students’ voice. We do our best to listen and pursue the most popular choices for our student body, which is why we send out the E-Days artist genre survey through the USG voting system every year in the fall. This year it was open for two weeks, beginning October 22nd. The results then guide us as we search for talent, leading us to our artists this year, which cover EDM, alternative, and rap, the top three genres voted for, across Friday and Saturday night. We never just assume we know what is best for the campus – while we do use our training and experience to the best of our ability, we simply want to create opportunities for everyone to have fun and take a break from class and are always open to any and all suggestions to make that happen.
To address your concern regarding the fees at E-Days events, I understand and appreciate your desire to keep it open to everyone. Just to clarify, at the carnival, all students eat free. For those who wish to drink alcohol, a $5 wristband pays for 3 drinks of your choice, which comes to less than $2 per drink. This cost helps to cover a portion of the cost of the alcohol, as well as encourage responsible consumption. The carnival also features numerous other activities put on by the Carnival E-Days committee and various clubs and organizations. Thus, every student is welcome and encouraged to participate. If a student does choose to buy an E-Days packet, the packet includes a ticket to the comedian, Friday night event, and Saturday night concert, as well as all of the themed goodies chosen that year – the official E-Days shirt, sometimes a keychain, coupons, stickers, etcetera. The cost of the packet is $45, however there is also the option to buy individual tickets to the events – the comedian ticket is $5, the Friday night event is $15, and the Saturday night concert is $25. Thus, you have the option to pick and choose which events you want to go to. However, if you were to buy all 3, the cost would be the same as the packet, which includes all of the extra fun things, which is why we encourage buying the packets. We do not make a profit on E-Days – the ticket sales ultimately help us to break even on the event, along with all of the sponsorships we work to earn each year that add up to almost 50% of the E-Days budget.
In reference to the fire dancers, while I am not sure of which year you are referring to, I can confirm that based on each committee’s budget, historically and currently, spending that much on dancers is not a financial possibility. I agree that doing that would not be a good use of event funds and I am confident it is not something we would do, in the past or in the future. We use our budget to the fullest to create as many quality chances for students to relax as possible.
I hope I have addressed your main worries about E-Days. If you would to discuss these issues further, please feel free to reach out to me at lawilson@mymail.mines.edu. I would be happy to discuss any of these things in person. Also, if you are interested in getting more involved in the E-Days planning process, I would encourage you to consider joining an E-Days committee in the fall – we have nearly 100 students that combine with MAC to make E-Days come to life, and we love to have as many students involved as possible.
Respectfully,
Lauren -
Anonymous commented
I agree this is some serious oversight by MAC. Not even putting out a survey to see which Genre of music the students would prefer this year (lets be honest, every year they've done the survey they put such high expectations on for the bands its really just to see what genre we want). Plus I heard, in an unconfirmed rumor, that 3500 of the budget was spent on fire dancers. Really? Seems like a random and completely pointless thing to do, and its causing us to have to pay for historically free events?It's not even worth it, I can have fun without all this money grabbing bs.