Broadside News

Katherine Morgenegg, Broadside Correspondent

As the vacant Nov. 16 fall concert approaches George Mason University, the Student Activities Office invited students to participate in an online survey on Surveymonkey.com to vote for which bands or artists they would like to see perform.

Surveymonkey, a relatively new piece of technology at Mason, is in its second year of use, but has been growing in popularity at other colleges.

Surveymonkey has been used not only for surveys but for registrations and other online forms at Mason over the past two years.

The link to the survey for the fall concert was posted on the Welcome Week Facebook group where students answered one question: who they wanted to see perform.

The choices consisted of The Zac Brown Band, Keri Hilson and Drake, Drake and Kid Cudi, The All-American Rejects and Taking Back Sunday, and David Cook and Keri Hilson.

Based on the results, Student Activities chose the most popular pairing to pursue in signing a contract.
Although the results of the survey are in, they cannot be released yet as the contract has not been completed.

“Hopefully, we will be able to release that [information] within the next two weeks,” said Dennis Hicks, Assistant Director at Student Activities.

Surveymonkey was used to see what musicians students were interested in for the fall concert in 2008, but the feedback was not extensive as the technology was new to the school.

“This year, we got a big response,” said Hicks. “Almost 1,000 students responded.”

Musicians were listed on the survey based on their availability for the time of the event as well as other factors such as the pricing of the tickets.

“We want to sell tickets to students for around $10,” said Hicks. Therefore, the original ticket price has to be taken into account when considering musicians.

There was also a wide variety of genres among the choices on the survey, which helped show what genre of music was most interesting to students.

For more information, visit the Student Activities website at sa.gmu.edu or visit the Student Activites office, located in Student Union Building I, Room 101.