In-person events are slated to return this semester for the Student Entertainment Committee. PHOTO CREDIT: Student Entertainment Committee
The Student Entertainment Committee (SEC) is holding in-person events again after a slow fall semester.
Alison Carpino, the SEC recruitment and retention coordinator, said that the fall semester had no in-person concerts or events but that they are planning on holding more events this spring.
“I think that we’re slowly moving out of what we had to do for COVID,” Carpino said. “Last year, everything was just completely online. We had, like, three or four online shows that were on Zoom and all of our meetings were online, but now we have in-person meetings. We’re starting to look into more in-person events.”
Michael Miscia, the SEC business manager, said the SEC didn’t schedule any in-person events because of the threat of cancellations and a lack of refunds. Last semester, concerts for Polo G and Playboi Carti were canceled. Those two concerts were planned by Pent Group, which some confused to be SEC events.
“We didn’t book any conference last semester that wasn’t that was mainly due to COVID,” Miscia said. “In my sophomore year or junior year, we had one contract with, for example, Terry Crews. And when we had that booked, we couldn’t cancel this contract anymore. So we had to do a show virtually and we don’t want to be in a similar situation with that, having something we thought would be in-person and then going virtually, it’s not really the same experience.”
Miscia said the SEC budget is for the whole school year, so money that was untouched in the fall semester is being used for events in the spring.
“That’s why I was very hesitant during this, and that has really made us have to be strict about what events we can put on,” Miscia said. “And then last year, we launched digital shows. They were cheaper to put on since it was virtual, but not by that much, artists so charged a pretty big fee.”
Carpino explained the process of choosing which talent comes to the university, including social media posts on the committee’s accounts where they ask students to choose between guest speakers.
“The comments do actually really help, you know, when we have a list of names, we don’t know who we can get because it’s up to their availability,” Carpino said. “But knowing that let’s say Cody Ko had more votes than someone else, we first look into Cody Ko to see if he’s able to come to URI, and then we move on from there.”
Carpino continued by saying that even if a talent wins the most popular vote among the student body via Instagram, it is not always possible that they come to URI due to availability and pricing issues. The committee then looks into booking the second most popular vote via their Instagram poll and continues the process from there.
Carpino went more in-depth about the events this semester, such as dinosaur-themed spring fest, comedy shows, a spring concert and a guest speaker, Shaun White, an Olympic gold medalist and recommended that students check the SEC social media for more information on upcoming plans.