Bang for our buck: CUAB needs to make better investments for fee-paying students.

The Carolina Union Activities Board owes fee-paying students a better return on their investment. With few exceptions, CUAB has used student fees to pay large sums for performances that are poorly attended. As the response to the choice of The New Pornagraphers for homecoming has shown, CUAB needs to put quality before quantity in planning each year’s events. Fewer events would be a palatable payoff for more popular — and attended — performances.

This year, CUAB has an estimated $364,000 at its disposal in student fees, said Zoey LeTendre, CUAB’s program adviser, in an email. That figure accounts for about one-third of student organization fees but, if history is any indicator, students won’t be rewarded for the $13 they pay each year.

At the 2009 homecoming, CUAB spent a combined $56,500.55 to have the rapper Fabolous and singer-alumnus Anoop Desai perform. Even with Desai’s on-campus popularity, the event attracted fewer than 2,000 students and brought in a mere $11,405, LeTendre said.

CUAB appeared to rebound last year, treating students to a sold-out homecoming performance and another sell-out show from Big Boi in January.

CUAB is paying $40,000 for The New Pornographers, compared to $60,000 for the Passion Pit lineup. But the group isn’t close to having two-thirds of Passion Pit’s following.

The choice follows a disappointing Big K.R.I.T. show just two weeks ago that LeTendre said she expects to cost the board more than $8,000 in expenses.

Passion Pit and Big Boi resulted in losses of $38,746 and $25,255.87, respectively. These losses aren’t uncommon for universities that subsidize student entertainment with student fees, as East Carolina University and N.C. State University have done in recent years. But those choices should be for acts worthy of their expense.

Emily McLamb, associate director for student affairs at ECU, said last year’s homecoming show, which featured notable rapper Ludacris, cost ECU roughly $30,000 in losses despite a sold-out show that cost $100,000.

In returning to its old ways this year, CUAB has shown that it didn’t learn from last year’s success. While it can be difficult, for a variety of factors, to bring high-quality performances appealing to diverse tastes, CUAB must realize that saving money for better performances is more worthwhile than spending on a flop.

CUAB can take a step toward assuring students better performances — and itself less criticism — by improving its transparency.

The self-selecting body controls student fees, yet it rarely operates in the public eye. And when it does have public meetings, it does not advertise them online. And the board’s new media policy, requiring that questions be emailed in advance of interviews, only serves to conceal CUAB’s operations behind a calculated message.

Without this transparency, it’s difficult to defend the process of bringing The New Pornographers. The board should look to its out-of-character success last year, along with the consistent success of the CUAB Comedy Festival, and realize that it isn’t serving students with more events.

It needs to understand that it serves through quality events. With only a few exceptions, that quality has been lacking. Students should no longer have to look to Duke University or peer institutions and feel envious of their performances. And they should no longer be kept in the dark about how and why their fees are going to bands they have little to no interest in seeing.