Are Boston University students caught in a bad romance or dans le love game? Either way, they had the option to vote for Lady GaGa ‘- or anyone else ‘- to perform at Programming Council’s SpringFest event in a recent PC survey.

Over 500 Boston University students responded to the survey, PC officials said.’

The survey, which was launched in December and closed on Jan. 12, asked students whether they would prefer a performance by one larger artist or two by smaller ones and allowed them to name an artist and genre they would like to see perform.

PC also asked students to weigh in through other outlets such as Facebook and Twitter as early as November of last year.

‘Students will not want to miss what PC has in store for the end of the year,’ said PC President and College of Engineering senior Sam Minkoff in an email.’ ‘It will be bigger and better than ever, and we’ve been working for two years to ensure that this is the case.’

The numerous student responses were able to help PC narrow the focus on one particular artist, but survey popularity is no guarantee that a particular artist will come to BU he said.’ He declined to comment on who that artist was.

‘Final artist decisions depend on venue availability, artist availability, budget, university approval and a variety of other factors,’ he said.

Although this was the first time PC has created an online survey to gather information, the organization always attempts to get students involved in its events, Minkoff said.

‘We have solicited feedback for each and every event that we have and always read and respond to emails, phone calls and comments left through our website,’ he said.

Despite PC’s attempts to publicize the survey through social networking, flyers and email blasts to their mailing lists, some students say they did not know about the opportunity to vote.

College of Arts and Sciences freshman Joshua Nelson said while he would consider attending PC’s spring event, he did not know about the survey and most likely would not have participated in it if he had.

‘If they emailed me, I’d probably delete it, and if there were flyers, I probably wouldn’t have read them,’ he said.

College of Communication sophomore Andrew Bungert said he would have voted in the survey had he known about it.

‘We could get some good concerts [if people voted],’ he said.’ ‘I wouldn’t mind if a band like Muse stopped by BU on their tour.’

Not all students said they believe voting in the survey would have had an impact.’ CAS freshman Jennifer Kole said she thought her artist choices would have been either too obscure to have been echoed by other students or too big to be obtainable for PC’s spring event.

‘I vaguely saw something about the survey but didn’t do it,’ she said.’ ‘I just figured everybody would pick Lady GaGa and my one vote wouldn’t count.’

PC has yet to release the results of the survey or more details of what else the spring event will involve. According to their site, the concert and event are scheduled for sometime in April.’
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