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After coming so close to landing a concert with Sum 41, the Student Government Association, with the blessing of the Office of Student Affairs, will instead sponsor a Third Eye Blind concert in the Firestone Fieldhouse March 29.
In the aftermath of misunderstandings between university administrators, Student Government Association officials and students, procedural changes have been created to ensure future concerts will undergo a smooth approval process.
“We learned that there are honest differences of opinion about what is appropriate entertainment for our campus,” Dean of Student Affairs Dr. Mark Davis said. “We also learned that as we continue to pursue major concert events, we need clearer concert guidelines and procedures so that everyone is working from a common base.”
Before Spring Break, seven bands in the combined Sum 41 and Ataris tours were scheduled to play at Alumni Park in April. After Concert Committee Chair Jimmy Hutcheson made an offer to the bands, the Office of Student Affairs performed a check that determined Sum 41’s lyrics and persona were inappropriate for the Pepperdine community.
The event would have been billed as a fundraiser for the Amy Ecker Memorial Scholarship. Ecker died last year in a car accident on her return to campus after Spring Break.
Davis said he was enthusiastic about the idea of bringing a major concert to campus to honor the memory of Ecker’s life. However, he said he was concerned that promoting a concert in her name that violates everything she stood for would potentially upset the Ecker family. The Ecker family had not been approached about the concert because the decision to bring in the bands had not been made official.
“It was a mutual decision by Pepperdine and the (Sum 41) agent not to have Sum 41 come,” Davis said. “We talked to the agent to see if any compromise could be made.
“I don’t think it’s fair for us to invite a band to campus and then ask them to cut out their hit song or expect that they can clean up their act when their identity is built upon values contrary to our mission.”
Further discussions determined the Ataris tour could not come alone to Pepperdine due to financial concerns that the tour could not carry the bill without Sum 41.
SGA President Ben Elliott discussed the prospects of donating proceeds from the Third Eye Blind concert to the Amy Ecker Memorial Scholarship. “If Third Eye Blind goes well, and we get student involvement, then we hope to donate proceeds in the memory of Amy Ecker,” Elliot said.
In the process of bringing the Sum 41 and Ataris tours to Pepperdine, a chain of events led to Student Affairs’ decision to pull the final offer.
According to Davis, the prospects of competitive offers from other campuses caused the urgency to approve the bands and to put in an offer once it was known the bands were available. Davis also said SGA officers assured the staff of Student Affairs that the lyrics were appropriate.
“As a healthy check and balance, we should have had one of our staff members also do a lyric check,” he said. “But also, there was a time pressure and they had to get an offer in by that Friday.”
After the offer was made, Student Activities Coordinator Michael Houston performed a second review and presented Davis with magazine articles reporting Sum 41’s crude behavior and a list of seven songs that had explicit lyrics.
In a Rolling Stone article that came to Davis’ attention, Sum 41 was described to have girls “come onstage and make out with each other during concerts.” There were also references to their promotion of drug use and property damage.
After The Graphic reported about the Sum 41 concert on Feb. 20, students responded to Davis by writing letters to express their concern about the issue of what is appropriate for Pepperdine.
Among these students was Nick Bundra, sophomore class president.
“As a Christian University, it makes a poor statement to a secular band, and the secular world as a whole, when representatives of Pepperdine are forced to back out of a commitment — verbal or written,” Bundra said.
“Sum 41’s presence at Pepperdine would only communicate Pepperdine’s willingness to allow diverse points of view, not their full-fledged endorsement of a band,” he continued.
Davis met with Bundra to respond to his viewpoints.
“Although I regret the university’s decision to not allow the concert, I cannot blame Mark for a gutsy moral decision to protect the Amy Ecker Foundation and Pepperdine from what he deemed too great of a risk,” Bundra said.
Davis agreed that taking back the offer to Sum 41 was unprofessional, but also said that in the future, “I would rather be upfront with the agent before we make the offer about our concerns rather than making the offer, knowing there are things of concern and writing it into the contract later.”
SGA officials are working with Associate Dean of Students Tabatha Jones to promote and work out the logistics of the Third Eye Blind concert.
Although the band’s lyrics are not as explicit as Sum 41, they do have references to sex and drugs, including their hit song “Semi Charmed Life,” which includes the line “Doing crystal myth will lift you up until you break.”
The approval process for having Third Eye Blind come followed new verbal guidelines set by both sides. According to Jones, the SGA Ocean’s 37 Board will officially determine procedures for concerts in the future.
“We’re continuing to work with student government to make it a collaborative process,” Jones said.
For future concerts, officials will analyze lyrics, the group’s image and present a solid marketing and revenue plan.
“The research methods for the bands needs to be redefined because there is a reliance on skewed sources,” Hutcheson said.
Also, the language in contracts will include clauses about excessive profanity and other issues of concern.
“Context is everything,” Jones said. “If we see a pattern developing or part of the presentation is to use explicit words, it would be a great concern to us.”
Some SGA members expressed a concern that the university policies and contract clauses are too subjective and may deter future bands from accepting contracts with Pepperdine. Cited as an example of such subjectivity was item D of the standards of conduct from the Third Eye Blind contract. The clause states objections to “excessive language that demeans and exploits women, excessive profanity or explicit lyrics, and/or excessive references to sex, alcohol and narcotics/drugs.”
In bringing larger concerts to Pepperdine, Jones said Student Affairs will also be in constant contact with the university’s Department of Regulatory Affairs and will contact other universities to do advance research on a band’s behavior before making an offer.
Davis addressed student concerns about how Sum 41’s deemed inappropriate persona differs from explicit movies or publications on campus, Davis said.
“There’s a big difference between selecting a movie with a fixed dialogue and inviting a band to campus with a live microphone. Do we feel confident that by telling these groups that you can’t sing certain songs or use certain profanities, that’s enough of a safeguard?”
Jones said the administration was wrongly portrayed after the Sum 41 saga.
“We get painted as the ‘big-bad-they’re-ready-to-pull-the-plug administration’ but that’s not at all what it is,” she said. “We want you to have great concerts and great shows, but we want them to be clean.”
Davis agreed.
“I do not see this as a shift in conservatism for Pepperdine, but I think it’s just a matter of being consistent with the same values we’ve always held with the university,” he said.
“Students feel like all we care about is image and we’re putting our heads in the sand about what’s real. Image is just a small piece of it. The image we most care about is your image. We believe that our students were created in the image of God.”
Submitted March 13, 2003
MALIBU, CA
