Well, where to begin?  I suppose that I should make it clear right now - I’m not about to bash Program Board.  They’re doing a fine job; they reformed the voting process, are working tirelessly for your benefit, and have exponentially multiplied their level of transparency.  Nevertheless, I’d like to make a few points.

PB should be commended for putting price tags next to the artists.  Now we know that MGMT is a (relatively) cheap buy.  But this information is still completely misleading.  Here’s the thing: T-Pain charges $50,000 for this type of event.  However, we still have to pay anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000 on top of that for production costs (security, equipment, etc.).  Now, you can argue that - since that cost is the same regardless of artist - this is irrelevant information.  Wrong.  I might think that T-Pain is worth $50K but not $70K.  My voting could (and should) reflect that.

Which brings me to my next point - the incentives this type of process creates are entirely misplaced.  We choose not to treat this money as if it were ours.  I’ve noted on several occasions that - were the price tag to be broken down per student - most students would be reluctant to pay $70 to see 3EB.  Were we truly weighting our votes by the price tag of the artists, we would observe no correlation between price and number of votes.

So - to test this possibility - I ran a regression between votes and cost in thousands of dollars.  When the price given was a range, I took the mean of the two extremes.  Turns out that there is a moderate linear correlation of .43.  Here’s the graph I made, including the best-fit line:

This actually isn’t, given the circumstances, that bad.  But it still represents skewed incentives.  Unlike Amherst, Williams College addresses this problem - they make each student pay for a ticket.  But AAS policy requires that every activity be equally available to every student.  So we completely socialize the process.  I think our way is fair and probably the right way to do it.  Nevertheless, the downside still exists and we should be aware of it.

If the name of the game is to maximize votes per dollar, our artist this Spring should unambiguously be MGMT.  From a musical perspective, I think The Roots would probably please the most people.  They provide a nice compromise for those who like listening to a band and for those who like rap or hip-hop.  Plus, they probably have the best musicians out of the list, so we would at least maximize talent per dollar.

But the student body will have the chance to decide soon enough.  The way I understand it, the next vote will allow every student to rank a first, second, and third for the nine options.  If one band fails to gain a majority of first place votes (and it won’t), then second place votes are counted, followed by third place votes.  Which, of course, makes absolutely no sense.  Third place votes could count as much as first place votes.

We could model this vote on the Heisman - 3 points for 1st, 2 for 2nd, 1 for 3rd.  Total the points and you have your winner.  Even better, why not take a page out of MLB’s MVP voting and have every student rank all 9 bands?  1st place would get 9 points, 9th place would get 1 point, etc.  This method would most accurately judge how the most people will be the most satisfied by the selection.

My take: we should not have this concert.  On a normal year, it’s not worth the money we spend.  But this year - in light of the College’s financial situation - it just seems plain wrong.  Spending $90,000 to bring Ludacris to campus is, well, ludicrous.  I understand that it’s our money; it comes straight from the Student Activities Fee we pay every year.  But surely there are things that we could be spending it on that are more meaningful.  I know there are some people that agree with me.  But until PB - in conjunction with AAS - makes this option a reality, we’re fighting a losing battle.