For the second year in a row Oceana hosted the Graduation Ball for University of Southampton. The Soton Tab kindly nominated me to reflect on the experience.
The ball hosted a variety of acts including Amelia Lilly, DJ Fresh, Pendulum, Scott Mills and Stavos Flatley. SUSU pulled out the stops boasting a red carpet, funfair and professional photography.
Last year when Sam Ling, Union President, announced Oceana as the venue for the Grad Ball he was hit with an initial backlash from students. Sam promised to use Oceana as an empty shell and build up from there. It’s fair to say that Oceana certainly looked different to how it does on a ‘standard’ night, although the décor of Ice House was MTV themed without any explanation. Pendulum even commented on this saying “ALRIGHT MTV” rather than Southampton or even Grad Ball.
It was nice to see SUSU continuing to support its societies even at Grad Ball, with DJ Soc playing Bar Quarter. For me this demonstrates how accommodating SUSU tries to be for its students. All in all everyone I spoke to on the night appeared to be having a good time although this could be attributed to the copious amounts of alcohol. At £3.90 a double it was hardly cheap either and it’s disappointing that SUSU were unable to arrange any form of drinks deals for its students on the event.
Regarding acts, several performances really stood out. Despite their late arrival, Stavros Flatley totally smashed it with their somewhat creative and exciting performance. Pendulum were also a huge success playing classic tunes such as ‘Tarantula’ and ‘Hold Your Colour’ which got everyone in the Ice House dancing erratically and enjoying the vibes.
A surprising amount of people lasted until the survivors photo at 4am and it has to be mentioned that the taxi and safety bus service was far better organised than last year.
For future it would be good to see some of the late night food being sold at a cheaper price as many students were left complaining as they forked out £4 for nachos.
Grad Ball is all about enjoying a last goodbye with your friends, housemates and course mates and nobody can say that there wasn’t plenty of room in Oceana to do so. Was it worth £50? Debatable.
SUSU certainly tried its best to ensure that there was something at the event for everyone but of course you cant please them all. Honestly, if Example cancelling at the last minute ruined your night then you probably missed the point somewhere. Having attended the event last year it has to be said it was better organised with a wider variety of acts and quicker service at the bars. I really enjoyed seeing SUSU staff as bouncers at the event which further shows how much SUSU was trying to give back to its community with this event.
For the future of Grad Ball, SUSU needs to continue listening to its students and consider creating a Nightlife/Grad Ball committee so the planning and organisation has student feedback throughout the process. It would be fantastic to also see more clubs and societies becoming involved in the event also with possible performances from PAU, dance societies and music groups.
Regardless of how organised and enjoyable the event was, the main headliner did not perform, so thus I would like a refund! You wouldn’t go to a music gig and feel you had your moneys worth if the main act wasn’t there even if the supporting acts were great would you?
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Your kind of missing the point of grad ball…
It’s to celebrate te end of Uni with everyone u know and have met over the last 3/4 years.
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£50 to say goodbye in a soulless venue like oceana without anything actually acknowledging it was the end. fuck you susu
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Was there a secret VIP bar for the BNOCs again this year?
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Yeh there was, i met a guy who claimed to be the Solent president or something there
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If this was all the stops I really question SUSU’s pulling ability
With the refund I paid £40 for several anonymous acts, and a ride at a funfare. Expensive food/drinks and a lack of imagination and creativity at the venue resulted in a rather forgettable night.
I enjoyed spending time with people I had met over the last 3 years, but frankly once you take the main act away its hard to see where the money went.
Congrats on failing to organise a piss-up at a nightclub.
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I’m glad that you had a good time with your friends, Anon. One of the benefits of using Oceana compared to previous venues in the past is that its high capacity means that graduates aren’t split up into two separate events. We want to know how we can make the Grad Ball be as good as it can be… but allow me to play devil’s avocado on some of you points:
1) Pendulum / Scott Mills / DJ Fresh – are these really anonymous acts?
2) a ride at a funfair – there were 3 rides?
3) Expensive food – do you mean the £15 Bridge meal beforehand? If so… is £15 really that expensive for a 3 course meal and glass of wine / champagne?
I agree that there is always room to improve – but we’ve got to realistically look at where we are at the moment. Otherwise, all the feedback about how to improve becomes meaningless.
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1) i dont know who dj fresh is, it was a pendulum dj set.. NOT PENDULUM playing live
2) 2 rides – one broke
3) no but £3 for a bag of chips isn’t cheap is it?
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Okay cool – so this is more useful.
1) It’s useful to know whether people enjoyed the Pendulum DJ set any where near as much as they would have enjoyed a live set.
2) Although there’s not much you can do about it at the time… looking closer into the reliability of the fairground provider before the event – and inquiring into one of them breaking this year – is useful.
3) You’re right – it’s not cheap. SUSU could look into subsidising those food providers so that their prices are lower – but it could mean potentially having to increase our costs.
Thanks… whoever you are…
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1)Another point to make would be that the variety simply wasn’t there this year.
last year there was comedians and the “one and only” chesney hawkes downstairs. actually variety…..
this year it was dj dj dj dj dj dj – and example PLUS a dj.
that isn’t variety at all.
and paying stavros flatley is the biggest joke ever.
and yes there were student bands playing downstairs but rather than get in a covers band for all to enjoy we had an exceptionally good female singer, performing songs nobody knew and an indie band singing songs about their mother not making them breakfast anymore (or something similar)…. not terrific.
A side point would be that there was no signposting for the main ballroom set times – so unfortuantely I missed most of pendulum…..
2) just get loads of dodgems…. its all the people want!
3) to be fair i wasn’t particularly bothered by the prices of the food – if you wanted it then thats what you gotta pay – i was just making the point that it wasn’t cheap and you shouldn’t pretend it was.
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David I appreciate that this is one of your big projects for the next year. Please listen to the students next time. No one wants to dress up smart to go stand in somewhere like oceana and overpay for drinks or see some poor novelty acts. From what I can guess the budget was between £100,000 and £150,000, that did not stretch well at all this year.If we assume 3000 people went (I dont know?) then Example supposedly cost £30k, where the hell did the rest of the money go? If you had cut out a few of the acts you could have offered a meal before hand for everyone, which id imagine actually costs the uni very little but it feels like something real as a punter. Secondly, either make drink prices properly cheap or don’t even bother bringing them down because most people will predrink before hand, make it clear to the venue that prices need to be right or people wont bother. I’ve seen plenty of grad events up and down the country that last a whole day or utilise outside without costing even close to what ours does. Is there no grounds where it would be possible to set up outside tents, book some local bands to play through the day and get a dj tent or two and give diversity for all. The fairground was a nice idea but cut a ride out and save some money. It definitely felt like SUSU were taking us for mugs. Maybe a better way to pass on value is provide everyone one free photo instead of £10, means you’d be able to negotiate a lower price with the photographers because of guaranteed orders. Maybe even get the uni’s photography society involved and post up all the photos the next day so people can buy them, they were clearly pressure selling to drunk people this year.
Basically just sort it out and give value for money.
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I enjoyed Grad ball because of the people around me. I did miss most of the acts as there was not a clear indication of when each of them would perform. The rides had long queues and it was relatively chilly outside. The one ride that broke down seemed to be tempting fate anyway at a drinking party (basically functioning as a human washing mashine). The win your own fish thing was a little odd as the fish that were won were handed out before the end of the night and thus had to either be carried around or left in the cloakroom. If I would have advice for next year is try to get a photographer at the door (next to it slightly as to not cause a bunch up at the entrance) and maybe half a glass of free sparkling wine at the entrance in exchange for vouchers that could easily be attached to ones ticket. Maybe a message board to write some goodbye messages. Thank you for your hard work this year hopefully next year it could be even better.
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