Chancellor Nancy Cantor will provide an undisclosed amount of funding for Hillel at Syracuse University to hold a concert celebrating its 60th anniversary. Hillel has struggled for the past year to acquire funding through Student Association.

‘She really felt that this is something that should happen,’ said Michael Weiss, Hillel president.

The concert will be held March 26 in Goldstein Auditorium at a time to be announced, Weiss said. The event is open to 1,500 students, and the three acts that will be featured have not yet been chosen, Weiss said. Hillel originally submitted an expected cost of $77,370 in the spring to SA, which denied funding for the concert three times.

Official details will be announced at the start of next semester. But Weiss said the acts would be ‘people with wide appeal’ and ‘current pop artists,’ and they would be comparable to acts at Juice Jam or Block Party.

Cantor decided to help Hillel fund the concert after Weiss attended a roundtable discussion with Cantor, Thomas Wolfe, the dean of student affairs, and several other student leaders on campus, including those from SA, Weiss said. Discussion turned to SA and the budget for student organizations, during which Cantor said she wanted to help see programming for students that are run by students happen, Weiss said.

After the meeting, Weiss and Cantor discussed Hillel’s situation, and Cantor said the university would provide funding, he said.

Weiss was unable to release the amount the university has allocated for Hillel, but he said it was not an amount more than that originally requested from SA — $77,370. He said Hillel is looking to receive funding and additional publicity from other campus organizations. University Union will headline with Hillel, and SA has already agreed to help Hillel with the event.

Hillel has also decided a portion of the proceeds from the concert will go to Hendricks Chapel. Weiss said he and Tiffany Steinwert, dean of Hendricks, have discussed how the proceeds could help and decided they will likely go toward creating an interfaith programming fund at Hendricks.

Hillel was first denied funding during an SA meeting on April 12, during which the availability of $509,325.81 in funding for various campus organizations was discussed, according to an April 13 article in The Daily Orange. Hillel requested $77,370, but the Finance Board chose not to fund the event because it does not typically give more than $70,000 for events in Goldstein, according to the article.

Hillel then revised its request to $45,000 but was still left unfunded at that meeting, according to the article.

When Hillel members approached SA again this semester and requested $60,000 to hold the concert, they were again denied, according to a Nov. 9 article in The Daily Orange. More than 115 student organization leaders attended that meeting asking for $1.33 million in total in requests for spring 2011 funding, according to the article. But only $75,000 was available for all the groups.

SA President Jon Barnhart said he and SA were very excited to hear Hillel had been able to acquire funding outside of SA. Unfortunately, getting the funding from SA for Hillel this year was not possible, Barnhart said.

‘They wanted to go big this year, and we couldn’t afford big this year,’ Barnhart said.

Barnhart, Comptroller Jeff Rickert, Chairman of the Student Life Committee and SA President-elect Neal Casey and Vice President-elect Jessica Cunnington met with Weiss and others from Hillel the day after they received the funding to discuss the concert.

SA’s role in the concert has not yet been decided, Barnhart said, but that is because Hillel is still in the beginning planning stages. Because SA is a group that does not program, Barnhart said the association would likely help spread the word about the concert, posting on its Facebook account and encouraging friends to attend.

Kara Landsman, Hillel’s communications intern, said holding the event will hopefully help Hillel receive more recognition on campus, especially because the organization plans to bring a ‘big recording star.’

Landsman, a senior, has been with Hillel since her freshman year and said she was definitely happy to see the 60th anniversary concert happen.

‘This is a great culmination,’ she said.

Obtaining the funding has been a long process, but Weiss said he is happy Hillel will be able to put on the campus-wide concert.

‘It’s really a special thing for me,’ Weiss said. ‘Hillel has been a special place for me as well as other students on campus, and this is a great way to get everybody together.’

dkmcbrid@syr.edu

 

Published on December 1, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Dara: dkmcbrid@syr.edu | @daramcbride