Letter to the Editor
Is there an option to please both CMT, campus?
ISSUE: 05/01/07 > OPINION > Is there an option to please both CMT, campus?
To the editor:
Now that the excitement and inconvenience of the CMT Music Awards have passed, we have time to ponder the local impact of this national event. Many of us had our Monday disrupted by the event: parking was even more of a hassle, we had to walk a little farther than normal, and hungry students were displaced from the cafeteria. I have yet to talk to a student who was happy that we hosted the event. Perhaps the signs I saw tacked to telephone poles summed up student sentiment: “Belmont’s priorities: 1. Country music. 2. Awards. 3. Televised events. 4. Students.”
In truth, many of the inconveniences were mild. All told, I think the event cost me about 15 minutes of my day. Multiply this minor inconvenience by thousands of students, faculty, and staff, though, and you get major discontent. To balance this, I would like to hear from campus administration and the staff of the Curb Event Center what benefits this event brings to campus.
Do we host the event for the publicity it brings our school? If so, perhaps we should rethink it: Only five of the top ten Google News results of a search for “CMT awards Belmont” mentioned our university, and most of those mentioned it in passing many paragraphs into the article. Do we host the event for the money? Difficult to say; I presume we get paid something for it, but none of the coverage I have seen mentions money. Imagine the change in student thinking if they heard that because of the CMT Music Awards, they are saving (hypothetically) $250 in tuition next year!
In sum, I suggest that administration and staff follow the old adage of “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative.” Find better ways to minimize the impact of the CMT Music Awards on our campus. (Do we really have to close the Student Center? Can we find a better pedestrian route from the parking garage to the main campus? Could we host the awards over a weekend?) Make a case for the advantages of hosting the Awards — tell us how exactly it is that hosting them advances our core educational mission, even if it is only by contributing to the bottom line. In this way, I think we can make the CMT Awards work better for all of us.
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