Author: Michael Darling
Well it finally happened. We discovered what would send the student body into outrage. No, it wasn’t President Prager’s resignation under questionable circumstances. Nor was it the unexpected change in Oxy’s registration system. It wasn’t the recent tuition increase, or the new requirement that starting with the class of 2012, sophomores will have to live on campus. Apparently, the only thing that could drive the populous of our fair campus to protest is a disappointing performance by a rap star.
Huh? Yes, I can’t believe it either. I know it seems too crazy to be true, but people were angry about Lupe Fiasco’s performance last Wednesday. As you probably know, Fiasco performed three and a half songs and then left the stage. Despite calls for an encore, he did not return. Sure, I was disappointed by how it ended, but hey, I still got to see Fiasco perform at my school, only a few hundred yards from my dorm room. Sadly, this was not the same sentiment shared by the majority of the Oxy community.
Shortly after the concert I ran into a friend of mine who was upset about the performance. He said that it wasn’t worth the $10 he had paid, and that he wanted to get at least some of his money back. I was confused. I had paid $20 and I didn’t think I deserved a refund. Also, it was a charity event and I’m told it is bad karma to take money away from cancer research. As I headed back to my room in Haines, I heard more complaints, including one that consisted of little more than “F- Lupe!” This came from someone who earlier had been pumped for the show. Now he was cursing Fiasco’s very existence and promising never to buy any of Fiasco’s future albums. However, he did say that it wouldn’t stop him from downloading the songs illegally.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. A major rap star had come to our campus to perform and people felt they had been cheated. How did we get to this point? How did it suddenly become rational to want money back from a charity event or to strike back at an artist because of a subpar show? The way people reacted, it was as if Fiasco had given a passionless performance and then opened fire on the audience. Yes, it was an abbreviated performance that ended awkwardly, but he gave it his all. While trying to pinpoint why people were reacting in this manner, it hit me that it was merely a symptom of the whiny nature of our generation.
We’ve become a generation that considers anything that even slightly disadvantages us to be a personal attack. We’ve been spoon-fed all our lives and now we demand that the world should give us what we want and we better get it now or else there will be hell to pay. We will complain if the cupcake store won’t serve us after it closes, as was printed on these same pages last week. When Starbucks closed for a few hours last week to train members of our generation, people said it was unfair for Starbucks to expect them to survive for a brief moment without their java jolt.
This time around, a large swathe of the Oxy community decided the best way to respond was to deride an entertainer because he didn’t give us exactly what we wanted. Think about this: We got to see Lupe Fiasco perform! Yes, it wasn’t the performance we hoped to see, but we still saw a top dollar performer do his thing on our campus. Do you realize what other people would give for that? Somehow we still shamefully demanded our money back and cursed him because he didn’t give us what we wanted.
My friends, there are important issues out there which are actually affecting our lives here at Oxy. So instead of getting angry at a musician, use your voice and point your passion towards a real issue. Might I suggest a few from the first paragraph?
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