By Mike Napolitano
The presidential election just got a little funnier for Northeastern students.
Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, will perform his stand-up routine at Matthews Arena Friday, Oct. 17 at 8 p.m. for the annual homecoming comedy event in conjunction with NU Votes and Parents and Family Weekend, President of the Council for University Programs (CUP) Sam Peisner said yesterday.
Tickets will go on sale Wednesday, Oct. 1 at 6:00 P.M. on myNEU for $20 each, members of CUP and the Resident Student Association (RSA), the hosts of the event. Students can purchase a maximum of two tickets per NU ID on a MyTickets link which will appear on MyNeu once it goes live. The tickets can be picked up at the Blackman Box Office one business day later, according to a statement from the groups.
“We couldn’t be happier that it’s actually happening,” Peisner told The News yesterday. “All of us are still kind of in a little disbelief that it’s actually happening. As far as I know, this is the biggest act that’s ever happened at the school.”
Peisner said Stewart’s routine will most likely be focused on politics.
“It’ll be a general stand up act but he will be doing some political themed jokes to tie into NU Votes,” said Cat Armato, vice president of programming for RSA.
“He really kicks it up a notch during the presidential season,” Peisner said.
Peisner also told The News that Stewart was not on any sort of tour, and was doing this show between taping sessions of “The Daily Show.”
“It’s part of select dates,” Peisner said, although he did not know of any other schools Stewart may be appearing at.
According to a statement released by CUP and RSA, the organizations are hosting the event in collaboration with the Student Government Association (SGA), Student Alumni Association (SAA), NU Homecoming Committee, Office of Alumni Relations and Office of Student Affairs.
“It wasn’t extremely difficult,” Armato said about getting Jon Stewart to come to Northeastern. “It was something that we wanted to do last year, but because of the cost of the event it was not feasible. The most difficult parts were rallying all the organizations together to pool our funding and convince the administration to take over Matthews.”
Peisner said that while both CUP and RSA spent some of their budgets on bringing Stewart to Northeastern, the Budget Review Committee (BRC) provided the bulk of the funding for the show by special request, which each student group can use annually. The Office of Student Affairs, Peisner said, is helping out as well, by covering the costs to maintain the ice in the arena.
“There’s a hockey game the day after, so we’re going to melt the ice Friday morning, do the show, then [refreeze] the ice,” he said.
Stewart comes to Northeastern following The Daily Show’s most recent Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series. Stewart adds the award to his collection of 10 other Emmy’s, two Peabody awards, and a Grammy for Best Comedy Album. Stuart has also hosted the Grammy Awards and the Academy awards twice each year, according to the press release.
