Paying Too Much For A 'Free' Concert

American Idol songstress Carrie Underwood can belt out a country tune – whether it’s the woman-done-wrong revenge fantasy of “Before He Cheats” or the sappy “Jesus Take the Wheel.”
Underwood’s talent and popularity apparently caused the folks over at East Tennessee State University to lose all good sense – and their ability to do simple arithmetic.
How else to explain the decision to spend $534,000 for a single concert? Worse yet, concert organizers spent money they didn’t have – overdrawing the concert fund bank account. University students, who have no choice but to pay annual activity fees that feed that account, should be incensed. They should demand more stringent oversight of their money.
Underwood – who won the fourth season of American Idol and has parlayed her win into a promising career – performed at the university on March 28. The concert was free for students and faculty members.
University officials didn’t question the concert’s jaw-dropping cost until April, when they realized that the concert account had been overdrawn by $209,000. Money borrowed from internal cash reserves covered the shortfall, but that “loan” will have to be repaid when the student fees for the fall semester begin to roll in.
No word on whether freshmen, who were still finishing high school when Underwood performed, will mind paying for past mistakes. Similarly, it’s hard to gauge how the university’s large number of commuter students and adult students, who aren’t really part of the campus social scene, feel about coughing up their mandatory fees to pay for this snafu.
If the university had reacted with an appropriate level of chagrin, all might be forgiven. The mishap could be chalked up as a learning lesson. But university leaders don’t seem particularly chastened.
University higher-ups have called the mistake a “human error” or an “accounting error.” They won’t say whether anyone was disciplined or detail the steps taken to prevent a future error of this magnitude. They prefer to mumble “trust us” and hope that the matter will soon be forgotten.
The chain of accountability begins with the student government officers, who plan campus entertainment each year. But they don’t act in a vacuum; university employees in the student affairs office must sign off. Finally, the office of the vice president of finance and administration has oversight.
It is quite likely that mistakes were made at several points along this chain of responsibility. If that is the case, discipline shouldn’t stop with the students. It should extend to the upper reaches of administration – those with the ultimate responsibility for all of the school’s financial dealings.
The Underwood affair raises another question. Are all of the university’s 13,000-plus students benefiting from the student activity fees they are required to pay? Or are the majority of students subsidizing the leisure time pursuits of a small number of traditional underclassmen?
Just 1,900 students participated in the balloting that led to the Underwood concert. That’s about 14 percent of the student body. What do the rest of the students want?
The university needs to ponder these matters before committing to big-name entertainment in the future. It isn’t clear that this is the best use of student fees or that such concerts meet the needs of a majority of the student body.
It goes without saying that the university shouldn’t spend money that’s not in the bank. Administrators must revise the school’s accounting procedures to prevent future six-figure errors. The trust of those who pay the bills – students, their parents and state taxpayers – is at stake.