On Thursday, February 17th, the Old Westbury Concerts Organization held its inaugural meeting. Over the course of an hour, the administrative staff of the organization explained the group’s ambitious agenda.
“We are an organization with a focus on producing professional performances. The types of performances include major musical artists as well as major comedians and other well known entertainment acts.”, reads an official email sent by organization’s president, Frank Milito, outlining the group’s mission statement. The primary long term goal of this organization is to bring musical performances to the campus. There are plans for these shows to be financed by a combination of school funding and corporate sponsorships. The main issue that was stressed was the amount of manpower and cooperation needed from the students to put on one of these performances. To illustrate how labor intensive the process of production would be, the staff showed a time-lapsed video of a stage being built and perhaps even more daunting, a sample hospitality rider for a band.
Producing a concert of the magnitude this organization aspires to reach is an arduous task in itself, but what makes the Old Westbury Concerts Organization’s goals feasible is the level of professionalism within the organization’s administration. Organization Treasurer, Steven Fletcher who is also overseeing security at these events, has experience in a security position in the Turning Stone Resort in Central New York. This is matched by the President, Frank Milito’s extensive experience as a Sound and Stage manager for various local bands and larger groups such as Gym Class Heroes.
Aside from OWCO’s administration’s qualifications, the organization is still looking for volunteers in the student body, whom are willing to take up managerial responsibilities. The organization emphasizes the opportunity for real world experience for college student’s résumés as an incentive to join. The group makes sure to mention that despite the fact that “this will be a lot of work…we also look to have fun in the process”. Participation from the student body in necessary for this organization to suceed whether it be in the form of participation or even voicing one’s opinion as to what kind of entertainment they want to see on campus. The group stresses that the entertainment does not have to be limited to musical performances.
As of now, the organization has received funding from the college; and, is attempting to gain more public notice on campus by various means. One of these means was recognizing and spreading awareness of the holiday “International Women’s Day”, last Tuesday. They did this by giving women on campus snipets of paper with a passage on it, which conveyed the organization’s observation of the holiday and their celebration of women for simply being women. While the organization has its long term goals; it also hopes to have simpler objectives realized, such as weekly karaoke sessions in the Student Union building.
Between the lofty long term goals of the OWCO, the experienced administration, and hopefully, a willing student body, this organization is a viable means of alleviating a problem of this college, namely, a lacking campus life. Aside from the objective of producing performances on campus, Organization President Frank Milito said one of the ultimate goals of OWCO is to “Bring campus life to this university.”.