Student groups hosting on-campus performances may need to start hoping for tips.
That’s because university officials have been charging groups a $500 set-up fee to use a heavy-duty stage purchased last summer to support large events, although, some student leaders said they were not aware of the added costs beforehand.
Christine McGill, director of Student Leadership and Engagement, said the money covers the extra staff necessary to construct and disassemble the stage after an event.
The purchase was justified because Northeastern “needed something a little more secure for our students,” McGill said.
Groups and program advisers were notified about the additional fee during the fall semester, she said, adding: “it’s our responsibility to tell students that they need to have a performance stage if there’s going to be a performance.”
Since student groups can make funding requests to the Budget Review Committee, the financial arm of the Student Government Association, the setup fee is likely to be drawn from the Student Activities Fee (SAF), a required annual fee that grabs $109 per student from tuition in order to promote on-campus programming.
Chris Bourne, SGA vice president for student services, said the setup fee for the performance stage is “something we need to look into and know for the future.”
The stage would is set-up by existing Curry Student Center (CSC) service crew members, Bourne said, adding: “I want to look into this more and see exactly where the money is going and exactly why the fee is there.”
Krystal Beaulieu, who served as Panhellenic Council president last year, said she was not warned about the added charge as her group was planning its annual “Greek Follies” talent show last November, and they have since protested expectations for the council to pick up the bill.
Beaulieu said the stage was set up prior to the event for an awards ceremony held hours before by Northeastern president Joseph Aoun.
“When we suggested doing the event on the floor (our acts had been choreographed with the larger stage in mind), there wasn’t even time to take the stage apart,” she said in a January e-mail to McGill and Rebecca Millette, the scheduling coordinator for Campus Life Scheduling and Event Planning.
Millette, who could not be reached yesterday for comment, said in an e-mail reply that the stage was in place for the Greek event, not the awards ceremony, and that “the stage was set up in the morning because of the lack of set up/breakdown time between events.”
“I’m not sure where the miscommunication came in, but there is a $500 charge for the stage and all groups have to pay the fee,” Millette said in the e-mail.
Beaulieu said the event was originally set to take place in the Fenway Center, a spot that was confirmed by an early copy of the Greek Calendar that was released in August, but was moved to the Curry Student Center Ballroom at the last minute. In turn, the group had not been allotted additional funding from the BRC to cover the setup fee for the performance stage.
McGill said she is waiting on eight to 10 groups to come up with the cash to cover events that required the staging since the fall semester. Among the events that were charged is one that Delta Phi Epsilon’s director of finance, Ashley Slocum, did not see coming when her sorority held its “Big Man on Campus” event last November.
“I really don’t want to pay them because they did tell us we didn’t have to [pay them] , just not in writing,” Slocum, who also serves as executive vice president for the Panhellenic Council, said in an e-mail last week.
