The city has just finished up its election and now it’s Eastern’s turn. Next week, Eastern students will elect a student body president and four other executive board members, as well as senate members. So the campaign season has been a long one in Charleston this year.

Throughout this campaign one issue has shown up continually: the issue of entertainment options for students in Charleston. Both city government and student government candidates have discussed the issues of how Eastern students can entertain themselves on the weekends during their four years in Charleston.

The term “suitcase school” has come up again and again in these discussions. Many students spend their weekends at home, or they travel to other state schools like the University of Illinois in Champaign or Illinois State University in Normal. Both Charleston city officials and student government members are trying to keep students here on the weekends. The reasons are simple: the city wants to keep us here so we’ll spend money and help out business and student government, and the university wants to keep us here so we’ll feel like Eastern is home, and therefore be more likely to stay for four years.

Some have suggested that the bars are the only option to help students fill the hours on the weekends. This is a problem, however, for the majority of students, because most are under 21. This year, Eastern has been lucky enough to have Sonor on campus. The student-run group has continually provided entertainment options for students of all ages at 7th Street Underground in a non-bar setting. This program has been successful and it’s been great to see students looking for solutions on their own.

However, my question is: what happened to the spring concert? Traditionally, Eastern has hosted a large-scale concert each semester of the school year. The first was held during Family Weekend and the music was geared toward both students and their families alike. But during the spring semester, the band is usually something geared just toward students, like Collective Soul or the Bodeans, two examples of bands who have played at Eastern.

In my four years here, Eastern has hosted one spring oncert, and that was my freshman year. The act was comedian Carrot Top. The show did not sell out (it was Carrot Top, after all) and since then, no concert has been held in the spring.

I realize it is no small task to get a band to come to central Illinois and play in a stuffy gymnasium at the end of April, but it seems as though Eastern has given up on the spring concert all together. Soon, there will not be any students here who even remember when there was a spring concert, and they will not know to ask, “Whatever happened to the spring concert?”

I also realize that a spring concert would provide entertainment for students for only one weekend, but it’s a start. The whole idea is simply to get students to stay on campus more often, and then they will begin to find their own entertainment and, more importantly, Eastern will start to feel like home, as it does for those of us who spend most weekends here.

The University Board is in charge of scheduling such acts and its budget, which is funded by student fees, was cut slightly for next year because of declining enrollment. With a smaller budget, something tells me a spring concert will be even more unlikely next year.

The UB does a great job scheduling comedy acts, lectures and “mini-concerts” for students’ entertainment, but a greater priority needs to be given to the spring concert, and maybe we can find a way to bring it back – along with the students.