By Stephanie Vosk and Michael Naughton

When four of Northeastern’s top student advocates met for lunch yesterday, their focus was not on their plates or the ambiance of the Faculty Lounge.

The noon meal for the presidents of the Student Govern-ment Association (SGA), the Council for University Program-ming (CUP), the Resident Student Association (RSA) and the associate director of leadership development was about planning for the future.

After President Richard Freeland’s announcement two weeks ago of the postponement of the Springfest concert, some students worried they would not see the money allotted for the April 2 event.

However, SGA President Michael Romano said the $195,000 allotted to CUP for the event by the Budget Review Committee (BRC) in January was already returned in full to the group’s major event fund.

“Students will not lose a dollar,” Romano said. “But I also don’t want them to lose the experience of programming this spring.”

With only six weeks left in the semester, Romano said he knows the student leaders must mobilize quickly to ensure their plans are played out.

Romano and CUP President Tom Kneafsey presented a proposal to the BRC last night, asking for funding for a series of events they hope to implement in the next few weeks.

The major event Romano said he hopes will be held on April 3 may include a high-profile speaker.

“We’ve been in contact with the agents of Ari Fleischer, Rudy Giuliani and Bill Clinton to bring some political leadership as one of the many possibilities,” Romano said.

He said he also wants to provide compensation for the senior class. The class of 2004, having shelled out the extra dollars for their Student Activity Fee in anticipation of a major concert, will not reap the benefit if the concert is postponed to the fall.

Romano said compensation could include lowering the cost of Senior Week or providing discounted tickets to major sporting events.

“No one is trying to replace or replicate in any fashion the Ludacris concert,” Romano said. “We will prove undoubtedly our commitment to the community, our ability to have large and safe programming events and our ability to remain resilient to the bureaucracy and red tape that could easily discourage us.”

Some red tape Romano may have to face includes Freeland’s approval of any major event.

Freeland said in a letter to the community two weeks ago, “To proceed with the planned concert would be to ignore the challenges of this moment and to miss an opportunity to demonstrate our most important values.”

After the announcement, many students protested, claiming the cancellation of the event was a direct reflection on the nature of the concert — a hip-hop performance.

“I strongly doubt that if this was a concert headlining an act such as Norah Jones that it would have ever been canceled. It is really unfortunate that such a lame excuse was used to silence angry and unsatisfied students,” wrote Anissia Duncan, the 874th person to sign an online petition (www.pillagefest.com) denouncing Freeland and his decision.

While Romano did not say he agrees the Ludacris act was a factor in the cancellation, he said he does not expect trouble getting another large-scale event app-roved.

He said the event being planned will have “the community tie that we haven’t really had before.”

“Basically, there are two communities we need to be concerned about; that’s the external community and, obviously, the student body,” Kneafsey said. “Both of those communities are hurting and the relationship between the two has suffered greatly and what we’re trying to do is somehow aid the betterment of that.”

Kneafsey said the keynote speaker would be focusing on helping students rebuild. A community service day is also in the works and would be geared towards the outside.

He said by tying the two events together, the speaker may help gain support for the service day. He also said he hopes by offering the opportunity for different projects, students might be more apt to get involved.

“Community service can be more than the traditional cleaning the street and the traditional making the sandwich; it can be using your interests already as a valuable tool in your community,” he said.

However, Kneafsey said all of the students’ efforts are “going on hope.”

After the cancellation of the concert and one of the “most drastically different years” at Northeastern, as Romano called it, Kneafsey said students are making one last attempt to plan a large-scale event.

“I feel better knowing [the money] is not going to come out of our fund. I wasn’t going to see Ludacris anyway. Clinton is a better choice, but there’s still a 50-50 chance I would go see him,” said Michael Gammell, a sophomore English major.

Kneafsey said if Freeland does not approve the keynote speaker, the effort to plan a large event will probably stop.

When asked if students would be angry that another event was dangled in front of them and then taken away, he said it probably would not make a difference.

“I don’t think our student morale at this point can get much worse,” he said.

Regardless of if the event is approved, some students are not satisfied with using the money once allocated for a concert on a political speaker.

“It doesn’t have the same wide-spread appeal,” said Laura Platt, a freshman business major. “Springfest is a celebration. They think having a political speaker would be better, but a lot of people on campus wouldn’t be for that.”

In order to give students from different backgrounds a chance to voice their opinions on what is right for the student body, Associate Director of Leadership Development John Silveria said a group from the Experienced Leaders Office is working on planning other events to bring students and community members together.

To provide a forum for even more students, the upcoming Developing Leaders Conference is taking on a different tone.

While the forum was originally supposed to be a rescheduled “Star Performers Conference,” it will now focus on what student leaders can do to help reshape the university in the wake of the post-Super Bowl riots.

“I think that this is maybe the start of that dialogue, and, maybe, for some students, it’s the first time that they get the opportunity to really discuss their feelings and maybe discuss how they can empower each other to overcome situations like what happened after the Super Bowl,” Silveria said.

The conference will be held in afterHOURS March 27 at 11 a.m. To register, students can go to www.lego.neu.edu.