Attract students with cheap events

The Carpenter Performing Arts Center held its grand opening on Oct. 1, and in the words of Daily Forty-Niner entertainment editor Thomas Growney, the only students present were the help.

Maybe this is due to the exorbitant admission price for the grand opening: $350 a per son for the pre-gala dinner, performance and party afterward.

The Carpenter Center's 1994-95 schedule includes interpretive dance performances and a "Tantric Buddhist ritual" with "two dozen monks dressed in robes of ruby and saffron (chanting) for world peace and understanding." Events like these are not likely to draw a large student audience.

For such a large theatrical forum on this campus, productions such as these seem more suited to society's elite.

True, the Center's schedule al so promises a 70mm showing of "Schindler's List" and a visit from comic Paul Rodriguez, but the ratio of student-oriented entertainment to highbrow stuff seems as slanted as the price tag for most of the shows.

Currently, the Carpenter Center's ave rage ticket price for events hovers around $14 and goes as high as $25. Students can buy discount tickets, but that only reduces the rates by about $2.

If the current sentiments floating around campus about making this a desirable university for st udents - to encourage both recruitment and retention - we feel that the Carpenter Center is an excellent place to start. The Carpenter Center should stage events specifically for the student body. Preferably events that students can afford to attend.< p> The only campus arenas for student bands so far have been the Nugget, the University Student Union and the now-defunct HardFact Hill.

This campus needs another outlet for the myriad of struggling local bands, and the Carpenter Center seems lik e a perfect venue. All it needs to successfully meet any financial shortfall created by selling cheaper tickets is to offer a no-host bar for the evening.

Maybe someone other than a student can tend it.