ETSU to celebrate 'Ludacris' Homecoming

Things may get "crazy and wild and ridiculous" at Freedom Hall on Oct. 27, when Ludacris will be appearing in concert as part of ETSU's Homecoming festivities.
"It's one of those things where whether you like the music or not, who cares?" said Trisha Nguyen, director of student activities. "It's very mainstream and it's a big deal."
Last year SGA raised the student activity fee from $4 to $20, allowing them to choose an artist for this year's concert from a more mainstream list. The student body had an opportunity to vote for who they would like to come to ETSU.
"Everybody was given a chance to be on the Homecoming committee," said Nguyen. "So it's certainly a good example of how everybody has a voice and everybody has a chance to give input. I think there will be some backlash over it being Ludacris, I think we're all ready for that, but it's student money, it's student chosen, it's student fees and I am not here to censor what students want."
SGA had hopes of keeping the concert on campus, but neither the intramural field nor the Mini-Dome would work. SGA believed that the intramural field would be too much of a security problem and the state fire marshal said that a concert could not be held in the Mimi-Dome.
"Unfortunately, we can't do it outside if we don't have a rain location," Nguyen said. "We definitely looked at all the possible options. It just didn't work out. The advantage to that is we can get more students into Freedom Hall, and it was built for concerts.
"We have a very mobile student body, so it shouldn't be that inconvenient. We will also provide shuttle services since we have to have it off campus, so it hopefully won't be too much of an inconvenience."
With the surplus of student funds, SGA plans on having a major event each semester. The plan is to create a documented rotating genre system within the SGA legislation to assure that by the time students have been at ETSU for a few years, they will have had the opportunity to have seen a diversity of acts.
From Oct. 3-14, students can pick up one free ticket. Each student will be allowed to buy one companion ticket for $10 from Oct. 17-27. This charge for the companion ticket is because non-students have not paid a student activity fee.
SGA acknowledges that Ludacris will not appeal to all audiences and therefore the concert will be advertised as an adult content show.
"The general feeling is that some people find him offensive and some people would be upset no matter who we had," Nguyen said. "The goal is to vary the kind of programming we have every semester.
"We've got so much money now, it's not one concert and it's over. This semester we have Ludacris, maybe next semester we'll have country music. Maybe the next semester we'll have a comedian. We would have something for everybody over the course of time, and I hope people wouldn't spend too much time worrying about this act."
Ludacris made his first hit with "What's Your Fantasy?" four years ago and has a current hit, "Pimpin' All Over the World.