The Brown & White

The April 17 editorial "Club budget cuts questionable" proved true on Saturday when an estimated 3,000 people showed up to Sayre Field. As co-director of University Productions Music committee, I want to thank everyone that came out to Sundaze. The support from the student body made this one of Lehigh's most memorable events in recent history.

Sundaze was much more expensive to pull off this year since bringing in a popular headliner like The Roots required a lot more money. UP felt that it was worth the extra investment so that more students would be excited to attend.

This was the case on Saturday as the equivalent of over 60 percent of the undergraduate population showed up, making it the largest attendance in my four years of Sundazes. Having a large-scale event like this is crucial as it brings many different people together in one common environment - something that almost never happens in any Lehigh social setting.

Events such as Sundaze, Lehigh-Laf-a-Palooza last November and the Daniel Tosh show (where over 700 people crammed into Packard 101) promote campus unity. They also give us reasons to form fond memories about our Lehigh experience.

Unfortunately, events like this require a lot of money to put on. With UP set to have its budget cut by $25,000, it will be very hard, if not impossible to have an event as big as this year's Sundaze. Smaller events will suffer too and UP programming as a whole will not be on the same level as it was this year and years past.

After seeing the success of Sundaze and the Daniel Tosh show, as well as many other well-attended events, I hope Student Senate will reconsider its decision to cut UP's budget. I realize there have been budget cuts across the board and the size of our allocation is still the largest for any club. But the reason we have so much money is to fund the multitude of events we put on.

UP got hit the hardest in the year that was most successful for our club. The hope is to make next year even better, but that simply cannot happen with this recent allocation.