With $84,000 in hand, Student Activities Board began planning for the quintessential party of the year. Homecoming heralds the return our treasured alumni to their glory days at Saint Louis University.

As a prominent organization on campus, SAB receives the largest chunk of the Student Government Association’s Chartered Student Organization funding each year. The aforementioned figure is solely for Homecoming festivities; $54,000 of that money – which comes from our Student Activities Fee – is reserved for booking an artist or group to perform on campus. Students eagerly await each year for artists like Eric Hutchinson, Jack’s Mannequin and Lifehouse to fill campus with buzzing anticipation and excellent music.

This year, however, SAB has not met students’ expectation. Their first choice for an artist – B.o.B. – fell through for various reasons. While we feel that this is certainly an unprecedented and immediate emergency, SAB has had more than enough time to plan for a back-up artist. With their mass resources, personnel, and organization, there is every reason to expect SAB to rectify the situation in a timely, reasonable manner.

Instead, they kept us on tenterhooks from then until yesterday, withholding the goings-on of the organization that were surely working towards acquiring an act for Homecoming. The use of our $54,000 was not revealed to us until this final stretch of time, with SAB finally booking Tonic (a one-hit wonder 90’s group). This is the final week before Homecoming.

Not only did they fail to organize themselves, they shoddily acquired a group that required a Google search to find. While Tonic no doubt has quality music, students will hardly wish to attend the event at this point. This furthers our little domino effect by giving SAB only a week to market this massive change to their schedule.

The gross irresponsibility with the use of students’ time and money is something that few can and should tolerate. It hardly shows the best of SLU to our alumni when we are scrambling to put together what should be one of the most heart-warming and vivacious times of the year. We expect more than information that is slow in coming and a Homecoming performance that will shun rather than welcome our SLU community.