The Daily Tarheel

Issue date: 2/14/08 Section: University

Media Credit: courtesy of www.boyziimen.com R&B group Boyz II Men will be performing at Spring Fest in April. They reached fame as a quartet in the '90s but now perform as a trio.

The 1990's R&B group Boyz II Men will perform on campus on April 26, free of charge, officials announced at Wednesday night's Student Congress meeting.

The group is coming to headline the SpringFest celebration, a campuswide event that returned last year as an opportunity for students to mark the end of the school year.

SpringFest coordinators asked for $20,000 in funds from Congress to help host the event.

"A while back we started creating lists of who we'd like to bring to campus if we could get them," said Hilary Marshall, SpringFest's event coordinator.

"A couple of weeks into that, we got a call from Boyz II Men's manager, who said they would be willing to come. Our decision was pretty much unanimous."

The concert will take place in the Smith Center, which offers enough space for 12,000 students to attend.

Although the concert will be free, Marshall said a donation would be requested for the Food Bank of North Carolina, suggesting either two cans of food or $1.

"We didn't want to charge, because that brings out more students and brings our total cost down," Marshall said. "And we like the idea of making this a philanthropic project, too."

Congress weighed the potential for a charitable effort when deciding whether or not to appropriate funds. They voted unanimously to approve the $20,000 request.

"We gave a lot of money for homecoming, and they charge for their concert tickets," Finance Committee Chairman Pedro Carreño said at the meeting.

The finance committee had favorably reported SpringFest's request to the full Congress.

Bringing Boyz II Men to campus will cost $42,000. About $30,000 goes to artist costs, while $12,000 is used for production fees, according to the SpringFest budget.

Last year's SpringFest featured rock group Carbon Leaf, for $5,000.

Carolina Union President Robert Gurdian, who has worked on the event, said he thinks the concert is reasonably priced.

For Marshall, though, getting Boyz II Men was about more than cost or student appeal.

"We wanted to get a group that we're all embarrassed to love now," she said. "We want to hear the kind of song that we had our first kiss to, or had our first slow dance to."



Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.

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