By
Shaun Clayton
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Editor's Note: Shaun Clayton is a member of Charles Darwin Experience.
For more than 20 years, The Cellar, located in the Memorial Student Union, has housed many performances by various artists. During Spring Break, however, The Cellar will be closed and destroyed, leaving these performers with nowhere to go.
Yet, the UA has done nothing to help them find a new place.
Those who use The Cellar only occasionally, like a student techno-ska band that performs covers of songs by The Doors, will be the least affected by the closing.
Some of the local comedy groups on campus, on the other hand, like Charles Darwin Experience and Comedy Corner, who use The Cellar as their regular performance space, will have nowhere else to go.
Some might argue the UA isn't obligated to help these groups. The Cellar was a generous gift, and for students to complain is an insult to the good graces they have been shown.
But who gives a gift to someone who really helps them out and then just takes it back at a whim? That's no way to act! What if the gift was, say, a kidney?
"Hey, Bill, you know that kidney I gave you to save your life a few years ago?"
"Yeah, Frank?"
"I need it back. I want to be able to go bar-hopping again. Gimme."
"What? I can't just 'give it back' to you!"
"Sure you can, I have a team of surgeons set up in my kitchen. We can have you prepped and ready to be sliced open in no time."
"I'm not giving that back to you! I'll die without that!"
"Ted, you're so petty. Your complaints are an insult to the precious gift I gave you."
(Ted gets knocked unconscious and dragged into the kitchen)
OK, so some might say losing The Cellar is not a matter of life or death, like losing a kidney. People will still attend their shows if the groups manage to relocate.
But it's not that simple. College students are a fickle, busy lot, and if certain groups start performing in a place on campus that is inconvenient or lacks a certain "ambiance," they just won't go.
Case in point - the Gallagher Theater was destroyed in 1999. As a result, the UAB films committee lost a venue to show movies, so they had to move to Social Sciences 100. The committee then went on to lose $44,000 in the following year because Social Sciences 100 was not in the main path of travel for students and lacked a "theater" feel.
Now, some other people might argue, "Who cares if the film committee lost money and now comedy groups have no place to go - they aren't that important!"
Well, these groups relax and entertain students, a growing necessity considering the expanding construction. These building projects force students to walk around huge construction areas simply to get to class, to try to block out the noise of construction while studying and to futilely search for a parking place.
UA better hope groups on campus are still around to entertain the students, or the Police Beat section of this newspaper is going to get a whooooole lot longer.
