When Garth Brooks, one of the biggest concerts ever on the UA campus, came to McKale Center Sunday and Monday night, you would assume that the Arizona Summer Wildcat, the university's student newspaper, would be there. Well, you would be wrong.

Despite our reporter's calls to the University Activities Board since April, the Wildcat's reporter and photographer were left wandering around "Garthfest" Monday night after they were left empty-handed at the will-call window.

Nearly two months ago, everything seemed to be fine. After all, we trusted our friends at the UAB, who were hosting the concert. They were supposed to make the arrangements with Garth's production company to get us our passes. What we didn't know, however, is that in the weeks before the big show, we would be left in the dark.

Apparently, UAB did forward our request to the production company. So it seems the UAB helped as much as it could. At one point, our contact at UAB even suggested to our reporter that he get in touch with the production people directly - and he did. But the production folks never got back in touch with him. They never returned calls, and they never gave us answers. But the impression we got from UAB was that the production company had our names, and our passes would be waiting for us.

Then, on Sunday, came Garth's big pre-concert press conference. When did the Wildcat find out about it? When our editors saw it on the television news that night. Not once during our conversations with the production company was it even mentioned, and never was this newspaper given notice of the media opportunity.

When Monday came around, the telephonic wild goose chase began again, until we were finally told that we "missed" the press conference and photo opportunity, which was Sunday night, and our reporters "might" have tickets waiting for them at will-call. Well, as it has already been mentioned, the tickets weren't there.

And that's the story. Now, we don't know where Garth and his staff learned their manners, but we were always taught you should be polite to your hosts. Instead, the Wildcat, not only a voice for this university's students, but also a recognized news organization and member of The Associated Press, was left in the dust, trampled by other media.

We weren't asking for special treatment or a huge favor. All we wanted to do was cover the concert for the benefit of you, our readers. Sadly, however, the people putting on this concert failed to pay much attention to us, or you - the readers of the Summer Wildcat.

Another newspaper reported Monday that at the press conference, Brooks said he approaches playing a concert as he would playing a sport - he doesn't want to lose even one night.

Well, he lost us.

Staff Editorial