At all colleges across the nation, “Thirsty Thursday” has become an almost holy ritual. As the weekend approaches (or for some lucky students begins), students everywhere downs shots and chugs beers, all before hitting the town for the first time since the preceding Saturday. In recent years, one activity that has become popular on a typical Thursday night pre-game is watching Jersey Shore.
RUPA, the Rutgers University Programming Association, is well aware of the fact that college students everywhere love doing this. In fact, many members of RUPA probably enjoy doing this as well. So they figured that Rutgers students would like to see Snooki at Rutgers. Interestingly enough, even though most students here love watching Snooki, they did not love the fact that she came here. In fact, some people were more mad about Snooki coming to Rutgers than a Rabbi would be about someone bringing bacon into their synagogue.
Students are really upset with the price tag of $32,000 accompanying Snooki. Sophomore Kara Stapleton, thought that it was “an obscene amount of money” and that “our fees should go to more important things”. Kara makes a very good point, a point that is being made all over campus. $32,000 is a lot of money to pay for anyone, especially when as Kara says “not even everyone could see it, only 1000 students were able to attend, even though our mandatory fees contributed to it.” That money could have gone toward an event all students could attend, such as Rutgersfest.
What is really interesting, though, is that many students are not merely mad about the money, they’re mad about Snooki altogether. People are angry about Snooki’s presence altogether and believe that it gives the school a bad reputation. They believe that RUPA had no reason to believe that anyone would want Snooki to come here. However, there were a thousand students who attended Snooki’s show here. At the same time, there were no complaints whatsoever about the event until information about the cost began to pour out.
A particularly biting argument is that about the reputation. This is because Rutgers does have a very good reputation. We have some of the best professors in the world, and a number of departments ranked in the top twenty of their discipline. Unfortunately though, many people do not realize this. Among New Jersey residents who are not associated with the university, Rutgers is sadly often dismissed as being trashy.
However, if you ever pay attention to pop-culture, you realize that this says more about society as a whole than about Rutgers. In Time’slist of the most influential people of 2011, Snooki is ranked as the #200 most influential person in the world. According to the article, Jersey Shore has become the most watched MTV show in the channel’s history. At the same time, Snooki’s book, A Shore Thing, has become a New York Times bestseller. So is it really so unbelievable that Snooki would have been warmly received at another college? I bet that if Snooki was to go speak to our neighbors in Princeton, they would go out to see her.
When it comes down to it, then, Snooki might have cost RUPA too much money. They definitely could have spent their money more wisely. At the same time, getting Snooki to speak here in the first place was not at all a worthless venture.
Lee Seltzer