Students vote to bring DMB to campus

Attending a free Dave Matthews Band concert on campus could be a real possibility for IU students in the coming months.\nDave Matthews Band recently announced they would play live at the college or university that wins the “World’s Loudest Pep Rally” contest. The contest, which is sponsored in part by AT&T, is open to more than 100 colleges nationwide. Now until Oct. 15, students 18 and older can send invitations to the band by voting on attblueroom.com. The contest began Sept. 1. The college or university who sends the most invitations wins.\nOn attblueroom.com, fans can submit their own invitations, such as essays, photos, videos or sound clips for the band. Individuals are limited to sending fifty invitations per day. Those who have AT&T as their wireless provider can submit invitations by texting “DMB” to 959, according to the AT&T news release. \nJunior Kyle Lee found out about the contest while looking through a Dave Matthews Band fan site Sunday night. When he first started sending invitations, Lee said IU was placed at number 34.\n“I asked my friends to send invitations too,” Lee said. “But by Monday, I saw that IU had dropped even further to number 36.”\nIn an attempt to get even more people to start sending invites, Lee decided to create the “Dave Matthews Band Pep Rally” Facebook group. \nWith the help of the group, Lee said IU’s rank moved up “from number 36 all the way to number 21 in about 18 hours.” By Thursday, two days after the group was created, IU’s was ranked number 11 in the contest. Lee’s group had almost 2,300 members at press time. A similar Facebook group, called “Dave Matthews at IU!!!!” had almost 2,800 members at press time. \n“It’d probably be the best time ever,” junior Todd Morin said. “I’d be willing to wait forever, just to get front row seats.”\nEven though Morin has already seen Dave Matthews Band in concert 16 times, he said he’s determined to get the band to come here. Since Sept. 3, Morin has voted a total of 450 times.\nBut even though the number of group members for the Facebook group has been growing steadily, IU’s rank has dropped since Thursday. IU moved down to number 15 by Monday.\nStill, many members of the group are posting messages on the group wall, encouraging everyone to keep on voting.\n“It’s going to take everybody to start sending invitations for IU to win since the contest is not based on the quantity of votes,” Lee said.\nThe number of invitations submitted on behalf of each school will be applied to an equation that adjusts the number of invitations so that it would “reflect a fair comparison of invitations on behalf of all schools regardless of student population,” according to rules of the contest, which are posted on attblueroom.com.\nSophomore Tony Gaither said that although he doesn’t really listen to Dave Matthews, he would definitely go to the concert if IU won the competition. \n“I feel like everyone will be going, so I’d be kind of alone if I didn’t,” Gaither said. “He’s supposed to be really good live.”\nDave Matthews Band will play at the winning school in November.