Author: Richie DeMaria
Following Nas’ headlining performance in Rush Gym on Saturday night, I discussed with an associate the merits of the night’s well-attended show. I expressed joy that Nas had played “It Ain’t Hard To Tell,” and my cohort agreed, but added an interesting point: fans though we were of his music, neither of us – and probably very few people at Oxy – really grew up alongside Nas. The concert was basically a nostalgia fest for an era none of us experienced, a night of supposedly famous music for people to grind to because it was famous.
Meanwhile, earlier that day, a few of-the-moment acts – Javelin, Fol Chen, Suzi Analogue – played to tiny crowds. The low attendance may have had a lot to do with the comparative lack of publicity. All of the organizers, myself included, advertised the daytime bands infrequently and quietly. The timing was also less than ideal; with finals not far from SpringFest, their missing audiences may have been spending time in the library instead.
I’m not totally convinced, though, that a publicity blitz and a different day would have increased attendance drastically. Oxy students, from what I’ve observed, are reluctant to venture outside their comfort zone unless they receive class credit. So many great performers, movies and lecturers have passed through campus with hardly an audience to speak of.
Maybe we are all too committed, too busy with the demands of our school work and too involved with our extracurriculars to support anyone else’s. The problem is that everyone thinks they’re uniquely busy. Every week, as another friend of mine once said, becomes the exceptional week, the week they really wish they could attend but can’t cause they’re so busy – “Next week, though!”
Maybe, but we really aren’t always that busy, and while these events go on we are on our laptops catching up on Hulu or YouTube or Facebook or some other popular distraction. Home entertainment systems like these have done a great job of keeping people indoors and have simultaneously fueled the idea that nothing ever happens on this campus.
Things do happen, though, and future generations of Oxy students would do well to go and experience these things. Not to be all village elder about it, because I’m not, and at the end of four years I still don’t exactly have a good idea of how to get the most out of the college experience. I do think, though, that there is a gap between the level of student involvement on campus and the level of complaining about Oxy’s supposed lack of student life.
So get involved. Do something. Make this school your own, whatever that means to you. Don’t live in fear of some trustee, administrator or college policy. Too often Oxy feels like a conference room or museum exhibit through which students are granted passage so long as they do not leave a mess, and it does not have to feel that way.
Stop being so apathetic or resigned. Stop watching so much Internet TV. There’s cool stuff happening right outside, at Oxy and in Los Angeles. It might not be Nas, and you may never have heard of it, but chances are you’ll get something good out of it. Like Nas said: The world is yours. So is Oxy.
Richie DeMaria is a senior ECLS major. He can be reached at rdemaria@oxy.edu.
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