By Sarah Gardner
Reporter
Diadeloso, the day of the bear, is a holiday in which almost every Baylor student participates. It’s the college version of a field day. Last year, there were games to win goldfish, activities such as tie-dying and a chance to break the world record for the largest zumba session.
But there’s one part of Diadeloso that students don’t get a chance to take part in: the selection of who gets to perform at the main stage.
The Baylor Chamber of Commerce goes through an arduous process to select who plays, and believe it or not, it’s already in the course of action for this year.
The chamber must plan according to the size of its budget. Whatever money is leftover from the shirts, food and various activities is put into the budget for a performer. They then look at how much money it would cost to hire certain artists and decide from there.
Given this information, it seems simple to make up a ballot of the different artists they can afford, email it to the students and give them a week or so to email back with their choices. Because this is all electronic, there would be no need of manpower to count up the tallies of each vote. Instead, a computer program could easy consolidate the votes in an easy-to-read format. Also, no money would be needed to pay for paper ballots, nor would Chamber students have to give up their lunches or breaks in between classes to sit and collect the votes.
Another way of doing a school-wide vote instead of through email would be to put a poll on the Baylor Chamber of Commerce website. This would bypass the consolidating of the votes into a computer program from email and would present the results as soon as the voting is closed. The only drawback would be that not everyone would be aware of the voting unless contacted through email.
Because of the participation in the voting process, more students would take part in the actual concert. If Baylor is spending money on a performer, they might as well have a large turnout to the concert. More students would then be drawn to the events before hand.
This would make students feel more involved in Diadeloso and draw more people together at the concert. Rather than just attending Diadeloso, students would participate.
Last year, Baylor featured Jack Ingram, a country singer. Even though the theme was “Deep in the Heart of Dia,” which was a country theme, a country genre does not appeal to everyone. Many of the students that attend Baylor are from large cities, such as Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, and their suburbs. By letting people vote for who performs at Diadeloso, this would allow people to select the genre that they like best instead of just what fits the theme.
In 1934, Diadeloso was started as a way to “bring smiles to the faces of students.” To truly accomplish this, the students must be able to participate in every aspect of Diadeloso.
Sarah Gardner is a sophomore journalism major from Arlington and is a reporter for the Lariat.
