Pearl'23: An Extravgant Farewell Party for the SU?
Written on March 9th, 2023 by {"login"=>"jcbphc21", "email"=>"f20181005@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in", "display_name"=>"Journal Club, BPHC", "first_name"=>"Journal Club", "last_name"=>"BPHC"}The Student Union Council is back again to stir up drama in our monotonous pre-midsem week with PEARL’23’s budget. Just a year ago, the SUC’22 presented before us a 1.2 Crore in-house fest with Rs.700 deductions, which was honestly nothing more than an overpriced extravagant 5-day college party for us BITSians. The deductions were then justified by stating that it was Pearl+Atmos, and the closing accounts for this fest still seem to remain an unsolved query.
But then, hold your horses; the SUC’23 comes to you with an 85 Lakhs budget fest with Rs. 800 deductions, and as usual, they will present to us three budgets for the sake of it, trying to convince us that anything less than the highest deduction will lead to losses. Now whether this is true or not is something we’ll never know because the highest deduction budgets have always been passed for every single fest, and yet the Pearl has always made losses, and this year even ATMOS has.
When the cultural senate was asked to prepare their budgets, we were told that the fest was being scaled down and that we must keep our budgets lower than that of Pearl’19. But when you look at the budget as a whole, by no means does it look scaled down, especially looking at the deductions. The budget allotted to clubs and departments is almost 3-4 times that of Pearl’19, but yet somehow, most cultural clubs have budgets lower than that of Pearl’19, with even the budget for inauguration being cut down; where is this money going? The fest is the cultural senate’s fest, and yet their activities are being scaled down to compensate for the extravagance of the fest.
Pearl has always been a loss-making fest, with losses which have gone up to over 20 Lakhs, and every single year the SUC scales up the fest in the name of calling bigger artists to increase external footfall. Pearl has historically had very low footfall, and this year, even ATMOS experienced the same, and yet the Student Union will come up on a pedestal and tell us that pouring all the funds into this fest will reap us profits. For the average student, fests are more about the time spent with their friends than the big show artist performing. Students will manage to have fun irrespective of how famous the artist is, so let’s not pretend that bringing in bigger artists is for the benefit of the students, or even the SUF.
Considering the state of our Student Union fund at the moment and the accounts of three fests not being closed, should we really be pouring so much money into a loss-making fest? We all want Pearl to happen, but Pearl can happen without expensive artists and overpriced activities. The SUF will continue to be in a vicious cycle of negative balances if we keep pouring unnecessary amounts of money into fests. Let’s just have a look at the two fests conducted this year. ATMOS’22, a supposedly profit-making fest, went into losses simply because of a lack of publicity and coordination between the FOB. Now let’s take a look at ARENA’23, the fest that is being said to have made a profit. The pro-shows, as planned for the highest budget, did not happen due to how late the fest planning began, but the point that it conveyed to us was that expensive pro-shows are not necessary to have a positive impact on the revenue of fests like the Student Union presents to us.
Now, why does it matter to you if the SUF is negative? A lot of us must have heard from our seniors about how club/assoc culture for any of the departments isn’t the same as it used to be pre-covid. A lot of us have even experienced this first-hand while trying to revive pre-covid club activities. Small incentives like participating in external competitions and conducting activities that enhance club culture outside of the fest have become extremely difficult because the Union can’t afford to finance them. The SUF does not solely exist for fests, but it exists for the betterment of student culture on campus, be it tech, sports or cultural. Unless the SUF recovers, all non-fest activities that you only hear tales about from seniors will be on indefinite hold. A good example of this would be the tech week this year possibly failing to take place due to a complete lack of funding.
With the current functioning of the Student Union Council, it seems more apt to call them a Fest Union rather than one for students. They must realize they have been elected to be a representative of all students, not the fests they conduct. The SUC needs to be held more accountable for its functioning and should not be holding such a strong monopoly over how fests function by getting their say in everything, including deductions.
We urge every single one of you to attend today’s GBM and put good thought into what deduction you think seems apt for the fest. If the general body collectively forms a large enough quorum to raise their concerns and not allow the SUC to obtain the highest deductions unobstructed, it’ll help build a stronger conscience for future Student Unions.