A much-promoted concert at CU last Friday faces derision after reports it failed to draw much of a crowd. Officials at CU brought in the event in an attempt to direct students away from a 4/20 marijuana smokeout on Norlin Quad. The concert was only one component of an effort to halt the smokeout that also included closing the campus to visitors, posting security around the quad, and spreading foul-smelling fish fertilizer on the grass there.
Westword estimates somewhere around 400 students were on hand for the concert, while CU student leaders estimated the crowd at 1,000 near its peak.
(WATCH A VIDEO OF THE CROWD BELOW)
Either way, the crowd seemed downright anemic in Coors Event Center, an arena designed to hold more than 11,000 people.
While Wyclef Jean was specifically directed by campus brass not to make "direct references to marijuana and other illegal drugs or make 4/20 related remarks," a Colorado Daily report states Wyclef mentioned marijuana during his first song. The university doesn't currently plan to sue Wyclef for breach of contract.
What else could be expected of Wyclef Jean, an artist who told the Daily Camera 4/20 was "an everyday holiday" and counts a love-song to marijuana (titled "Something About Mary") among his top hits?
KDVR reports that cleanup and security costs for the smokeout at CU typically run about $50,000. An amount officials have highlighted as a waste of money, particularly at a time of funding cutbacks for higher level education. In addition, noted CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip DiStefano in a post on the school's website:
The gathering disrupts teaching and research right in the heart of the campus. The size of the crowd has become unmanageable, and limits our faculty, staff and students from getting to class, entering buildings and doing their basic work. It needs to end.
Meanwhile, CU spent somewhere between $80,000 and $150,000 on the Friday event. Was the cost worthwhile? We'll see who shows up next year.
WATCH a video of the crowd at CU's anti-4/20 Wyclef Jean concert: