The Cornell Concert Commission announced Friday that its headliner, Between Friends, had pulled out of the annual Homecoming show. We at CCC, however, had known that this was coming for weeks. After all, it reflects poorly on any artist to choose to perform at a school with such a tarnished reputation, much less on the frat holiday that is Homecoming.
I serve as the Selections Director of CCC, the officer responsible for booking talent to perform here at Cornell. I personally spent months planning the Homecoming concert that was meant to occur Oct. 17, and I most of all have been disappointed by the fact that our artist decided to pull out of the Homecoming show. But I do not blame them in the slightest. It’s the University’s fault that it has now become a pariah, and it’s the University who should suffer the consequences, not its students.
Most of the coverage of the cancellation of the CCC Homecoming show correctly identifies the overarching role that Cornell’s mishandling of the Chi Phi case had in making Between Friends pull out of the show. But what most people are forgetting is that Homecoming is not the only event that the Chi Phi case will impact. The chilling effect that this case will have on student life means that all foreseeable shows by CCC and other similar organizations will also be canceled or threatened if Cornell does not take action to rectify its prior injustices and lift its undesirable status.
In light of Between Friends’ decision, we also decided to suspend the rest of our fall programming since we knew logistically that we couldn’t get any performer for the shows. No artist wants to perform at Cornell right now for fear that their association with our disgraced university would cause them to come under fire and risk their safety as well. In fact, many artists like Olivia Rodrigo are shaming Cornell for failing to protect Jane Doe. Unfortunately, students will bear the brunt of this unofficial sanction rather than the University to the great detriment of student and campus life. There’s no way of knowing how long this sentiment will last among artists, but this musical embargo will certainly last as long as Cornell continues to shelter the alleged rapists.
The inability to attract outside performers obviously affects CCC, whose entire mission is to bring outside talent to Cornell for its concerts, but also other organizations in the Student Programming Council, including the Cornell University Programming Board, TEDxCornell, the Multicultural Community-Fueled Activities Board and even Slope Day. Organizations like CCC who book talent to come perform at Cornell often do so months in advance of the actual shows. Moreover, the bigger the show, the earlier we need to book the artist. Thus, until Cornell does something to make artists feel comfortable coming to Ithaca again, the inability of Cornell’s talent-centered organizations to book artists at all means that the best and biggest shows of the year will be rushed, postponed or even canceled altogether.
Unlike Cornell, however, CCC is not standing idly by as all our plans for the semester get derailed. We are organizing a benefit concert later this semester to raise funds for victims of sexual assault. The lineup will entirely consist of student bands and DJs, for obvious reasons. I hope that this show will help support victims of sexual assault and breathe life into a stifled arts scene on campus.
CCC is an entirely student-run organization that has brought incredible shows to Cornell since 1971. In our history we’ve had musicians like Bob Dylan, Elton John, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and the Grateful Dead play, and in more recent years we’ve gotten the likes of Ken Carson, Tinashe and Ravyn Lenae to come perform. That storied legacy cannot continue if it is tainted by the actions of the University whose students CCC serves.
None of this is meant to suggest that our plight of not having live music at Cornell somehow outweighs what Jane Doe has experienced. Rather, it should be a lesson that Cornell’s moral failing with regard to Jane Doe has lasting consequences that ripple throughout all facets of campus life and affect all its students. This will not blow over, not when the entire nation’s eyes are on us.
Gustavo Ponzoa is a member of the Class of 2029 in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is a staff writer for the Arts & Culture department and can be reached at gap87@cornell.edu.
