Let’s see where that £50 you’re forking out is going shall we.
After numerous complaints and requests, Union President, David Mendoza-Wolfson, has provided a breakdown of the money spent on this year’s Grad Ball at Oceana.
Over £100,000 has already been spent on the event.
- £78,000 on acts
- £4500 on the fair ground
- £3000 for staff and technical equipment
- £5000 for the car-parking hire from the landlords
- £6000 on decor
One notable thing missing from this list is the actual cost of hiring Oceana.
It is no secret that many final years are not happy with the acts that have been chosen for this year, and, without a Grad Ball committee, we were wondering where on earth these decisions came from. Well, David can’t back up all the choices but claims that:
This year, we also carried out a poll for the Athletic Union Ball act, Basshunter came out second in the poll, and even though he wasn’t available for the AU Ball, we managed to secure him for Grad Ball instead.
Although there is no breakdown of the cost of the acts, we did some investigating and found out that Labrinth’s minimum hire fee for an event like this is $100,000.
David claims that SUSU aim to break even from the event and if any extra tickets are sold then the money will go into their “most important work” including student groups, campaigns, the Advice Centre “and so much more”.
In the blog, Mendoza-Wolfson also apologises for the lack of Grad Ball Committee this year and is looking into ensuring that this “oversight” doesn’t happen again.
We asked David to confirm or deny the rumour that all sabbs, student leaders and trustees get free VIP tickets to the Grad Ball, with the sabbs also getting a plus one free of charge. We also asked if it is true that all the staff and sabbs from the past five years get invited.
He told us:
As a thank you, the Chief Executive and Union President jointly host a reception for our core staff, student leaders, trustees and Union Councillors before the Grad Ball. This is completely funded from a separate budget and nothing from the ticket sales go towards this reception or invites.
We then asked “Just to clarify though, does anyone actually get free tickets to the grad ball?” To which David responded:
The reception includes entry to Grad Ball
Due to the controversy surrounding the ball, David has said that he’ll be in The Bridge tomorrow from 3pm for a Q&A session to answer student’s questions. More information about this can be found here.
Does this make you feel better about the price of your ticket? Let us know in the comments!
oceana is free to hire, they make money from all the drinks!
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Fucking hell. 5 grand on a small bit of car park for a night? I’m sure you could have bargained that down massively!
SUSU- incompetent at best.
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It probably would have been significantly cheaper to get parking tickets from the pay and display machine for each space haha
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Can’t wait for basshunter! And s club!!
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Great, a Q&A session the week before exams…..
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Union Councillors got free tickets too, so that’s around 42 free tickets to them…
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Union councillors don’t get free tickets – otherwise id like one 😛
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Yeah both this years and next years sabbs get a free vip ticket which is probably one of the reasons why susu don’t care that the acts are crap because they don’t have to actually pay for anything themselves. I’m also pretty sure that a number of permanent susu staff members get free VIP tickets too which is a complete travesty and something that I don’t understand the need for at all
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Core staff get VIP as well
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I can understand that voluntary officers (student leaders) could get a free ticket for all the time they’ve given over the year, if they are in their final year. But it is literally staff’s job throughout the year to organise it AND they get paid so have the money to buy tickets, in any other organisation staff wouldn’t get free tickets to an event that is organised for clients. And the past 5 year sabbs simply don’t need to be there, there is absolutely no reason for them to come to a grad ball 5 years after they leave. As for the current sabbs, same thing there, they have the money they can buy their entry to the event, I don’t care about what they do before in whatever reception.
It’s become clear that the staff in this Union have forgotten why they are doing what they are doing and that this isn’t just some other corporate organisation but a place that is meant to enrich the student experience. Everything has become simply too commercial, I understand it is an aspect that is needed but it’s just become excessive.
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Sorry, having worked for three organisations (none of these were SUSU ) I can assure you two have given me and my partner free tickets to client events and the other ran no such events. Free stuff for employees is done as a thankyou and a benefit of the employment package. It helps increase staff morale and helps build a community within the work place therefore increasing retention rates and productivity. Wait til you get out of education and your views will change when the real world bites you in the ass. However with that said year on year people have complained so maybe the decision to not have a committee was a bad one although I doubt the output would be much different.
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I understand that staff should be thanked for good work etc but I wouldn’t constitute this as an example of the great work susu staff are doing. It goes back to the fact that staff who have done a shabby job at organising this event, as well as those who work in completely irrelevant departments, are given a free vip pass when graduating students, after which GRAD ball is so aptly named, have to fork put £50 for a standard ticket.
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Is it me or is everyone involved with SUSU missing the point COMPLETELY.
Yeah you can get a Grad Ball Committee for next year, but it doesn’t sort out the fact the 2015 graduating year have been royally screwed over.
Also – 6K on decorations!? I can almost guarantee that it will not look ANY DIFFERENT.
Plus there’s still about £28k left unaccounted for? that’s not left over change, that could get another half decent act at least.
#notgoodenough
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£78,000 on the acts they’ve got is awful value for money. The acts aren’t what people care about, but it represents around 3/4 of the total cost.
The only figures there that don’t sound ridiculous are the amount spent on the fair ground, and the staff/technical equipment.
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Bear in mind that the £125k figure only applies if they sell 2500 tickets – and let’s face it, considering how shite this is, they obviously haven’t.
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This is going to be a fantastic night I’m moist with excitement – HALLAM ON TOUR
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And everybody’s £50 goes to…… Labrinth!
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$100k = £63k. Assuming that SUSU manage to shift all 2500 tickets, that works out as £25.20 just to have this Labyrinth bloke there. That’s more than half the price of a thicket. For just one act. I don’t give a shit about Labyrinth, and I definitely wouldn’t pay £25 to see him. Crazy idea, but if I did want to see him I’d just buy a ticket for one of his gigs.
I think the majority people would much prefer a £25 Grad Ball with no Labyrinth than a £50 Grad Ball with him. Even I’d consider going if that was the offer.
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* £25.20 per person
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Type your comment here
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I’m typing real hard but nothing’s happening! Help!
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78k on acts and this is what SUSU book with that money!
I can’t attend this Q&A tomorrow but somebody please ask the question….Who is the decision maker for booking acts and why have the chosen Sclub and B Witched?
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Don’t diss B*witched! Some of us are excited about B*witched..
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The first Grad Ball mistake was not providing a student led grad-ball committee! DMW graduated 2 years ago – he’s had his grad ball and he doesn’t give a f**k about 2015 graduates.
SUSU is becoming more commercial than ever before! Not saying that’s an entirely bad thing, but shouldn’t SUSU (A STUDENT’S UNION) put students first? Knowing a lot of UK students are on student loan, £50 simply doesn’t justify the ‘quality’ acts on offer.
As a project management student using the project break down structure, I briefly outlined what this event might needed and included:
Graduation Ball
– Acts
– Venue
– Transport
– Staff
– Technical equipment
– Car parking ground
ACTs (MAIN ISSUE)
Sound Clash – With 5x better acts (*depends on people music choice) but STILL £25 -30 ticket and people LOVE it.
Common People – £50 (YES same price!! TWO days weekend ticket) with acts like Clean Bandit (Under £ 30k to hire) , Years & years, Fat boy slim ( ~ 12k) , Jaguar Skills a lot more acts aren’t they expensive to hire? Especially the fees they have to pay towards the council to hire the common.
Labrinth – £6.3k – £10k
Katy B – £10k – £30k
B*witched – £6k – £10k
Basshunter – £15k max.
The tributes act just not even worth going into.
So with the maximum prices with all the acts, YES they are around £65k but £13k on tributes acts? REALLY!?
With £65k we could have way better acts than these!
Venue
Not to mention the acts, HIRING OCEANA? Looking through all the comments, maybe SUSU had better stop playing dumb with us? Oceana’s drinks will be double the normal price anyway, so they will definitely earn more than enough to break even from the electricity staff and licence.
As well as that, SUSU’s Head of Commercial is friend with Russel (the owner of Soton Oceana). Surely they could have secured a better deal for us?
Fairground cost us £4500. I am pretty sure if you can do better than that with £3k with a wide range of other companies offering packages.
Staffing
Wait!! SUSU don’t need to pay for the bar staff or security as they are through Oceana staff + security agents?
Is that mean we are staring at the legendary place “the CUBE” and moving on to Oceana?
Do you need to pay that much to internal staff on that day?
Décor / Technical equipment
£6000 décor? Are we getting top quality red carpet TO WALK ON, lighting (maybe Oceana can deal with that?), wait what else do you need? Maybe worth listing out to us.
Car park ground
£5000 – can’t argue with that. This car park might even be a better location to socialise than inside the club.
Transport
We don’t even have transport provide, WHAT A JOKE.
FREE TICKET
Not doubting that time and effort has been spent by SOME of the SUSU staff. But isn’t the GRADUATION BALL for graduates? Why are staffs being thanked with tickets? Also, if you are rewarding the union councillors & student trustees, isn’t it fair to invite other staff or volunteers as well? OR do they not work as hard? Wrong time doing the right thing, think twice before understanding who are the Grad-ball targets to. Totally disappointed!
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Just in reply to your Staffing section. SUSU pay their own tech crew to take equipment down to Oceana, build it all, operate the desks, make sure tech happens, then when the event’s over take it all apart and back to susu again (easier said than done). This could quite happily take 24 hours working from 9am – 9am, and with 3 rooms to do could require 10 or so crew. Which at miminum wage comes up to something like £1,500 on wages.
And the other £1,500 for hiring tech equipment is perfectly reasonable, if anything it’s too low.
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You have got your point and I know the tech crew never turn us down. Personally worked closely with them and never thanks them enough for helping out a lot of events.
And that’s why we need someone like you(mr m) from the TECH CREW to identify the list of expense. Otherwise from a student prospective, do you think we will simply guessed what it involved?
Thanks again for explaining where the £3k gone.
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tech crew are often effectively bullied into working significantly longer hours without pay just to make sure the event comes together
its happened in past years and no doubt it’ll happen again
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Totally agree with that. They should be the team SUSU should award to.
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Absolutely ridiculous. There’s already two cheaper, student run events which have been executed much better. At this point I would rather attempt a mass boycott and waste my fifty quid just to get back at them.
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BLOODY HELL THE GRAD BALL IS GOING TO BE MENTALLLLLL!!!! WHY IS EVERYONE MOANING ABOUT OCEANA IT’S AN INCREDIBLE VENUE, STOP BEING HATERS THE LINEUP IS HUUUUUUUUGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Basshunter woooooo!!!!!! EPIC!!!!!!!
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