4 Student Orgs You Pay For, That Will Let You Down [And Why It's Not [Entirely] Their Faults]

For those of you that let Mommy and Daddy pay your UNH tuition you probably have ABSOLUTELY no idea where that money gets specifically allocated. There are certain fees added on top of the basic charge for classes at our fine University. For example, The Health Services fee, Athletics fee (a whole other issue for another day), Technology fee and a lesser known, often overlooked Student Activity Fee, of which I'll talk about today. Every undergraduate student this year paid $96 dollars as their Student Activity Fee, creating a fund of just over a million dollars to be dispersed amongst the 14 prominent student organizations. Of these 14 orgs, it looks like this years top disappointments will come from SCOPE (Student Committee of Popular Entertainment), Student Senate, CAB (Campus Activities Board) and SCAN (Student Cable Access Network). Here's Why:

SCOPE: Drawing a 139k subsidy from the Student Activity Fee fund, SCOPE has the largest budget of any student organization on this campus. With SCOPE already bringing two of my personal favorites this homecoming, Lewis Black and Passion Pit, how could they ever let the campus down? The answer is simple: Outside forces will always prevent SCOPE from pleasing everyone. For starters with only 139K it is unfeasible for the organization to bring the big names that everyone expects them to, instead they must look to book rising or falling stars (big name acts can range from 100k a performance and up, way up). The limited budget also makes it next to impossible to draw acts to UNH without them already being on tour or in the area at the time. This forces SCOPE to find tours that are passing through New England, that not only have open dates available but are also looking to play college shows. Lastly, SCOPE must put up with the UNH Athletics Department in order to book any big shows, as Athletics have priority in both the Field House and the Whittemore Center, SCOPE's largest possible venues. Unfortunately for SCOPE the Athletics Dept. holds a firm belief that Athletes run this campus (if you don't believe me, look into the Athletics Fee you pay, believe me you won't be happy) and fail to realize that STUDENTS in fact run this campus. That being said, the Athletics Dept. gives SCOPE an extremely limited amount of dates for which they are free to use both venues. I hope you are beginning to realize the scope (pun intended) of the problem and the challenge at hand for this organization. The stars literally have to align for them to nail down a huge campus pleasing act like Snoop Dogg--even if you're not a fan of rap music you should have been at that show. SO, despite the fact that SCOPE will most likely let you down this year--by either not representing your favorite genre (sorry country fans) or not bringing any huge names--my hat goes off to the organization and all that they have pulled together so far this school year.


Next Time: Find out why Student Senate will MOST DEFINITELY let you down.

*thanks to those who provided the information that made this series of articles possible (you know who you are)

and as always, Live Life Lifted