ACPB has suffered several beatings in the Opinion section of The Student in recent weeks regarding the Spring Concert: the Feb. 14 Editorial and Joshua Levenson's Feb. 21 Letter to the Editor "Students Need To Take More Proactive Stance Toward College Issues." However, it's fitting that these rants have graced the Opinion pages rather than the News section. Before we criticize a group of hardworking students who meet weekly to do a service for the student body, I believe, as a member of both ACPB and The Student, that the campus deserves to read the facts rather than uninformed whines.

ACPB conducted a vote on Dec. 7 in which Wyclef Jean and Mos Def received the highest votes. Mos Def won the runoff vote taken days later. Over the course of the next few weeks, Wyclef declined and Mos Def put our bid aside without declining. Their inability to commit to our Spring Concert is partly because, being the ambitious and proactive group that we are, our bid was too early. In fact, most schools do not make their bids until March, sometimes April. So much for ACPB's "last-minute approach." Sorry, Letter to the Editor, but taking votes and placing bids in September is just pointless.

Both Wyclef and Mos Def were available, contrary to a statement passed off as fact in the Editorial. The artists could not commit so early because they are presented with several concert bids for the same weekends and it's simply too early for them to know in September what their best interests will be come May and what other offers may come their way. They may also only have been interested in playing at larger schools or they just simply were not interested in coming to Amherst College. All of these are clearly ACPB's fault, right?

My favorite part of the Editorial was comparing Amherst College's Spring Concert to concerts held at the Mullins Center, which is privately owned and run not by UMass officials or students but by Global Spectrum, a subsidiary of Comcast. A little effort and five minutes on the Internet would have discovered that though. UMass does have a student group which brings one concert a year to campus. Their budget? $120,000. Still want to compare us and our bidding clout to UMass?

And if we want to complain about how few people voted in the Dec. 7 vote and the Dec. 13 runoff (only about one-fourth of the school population), let's turn those fingers on the students and not the ACPB who sent out campus-wide emails through AAS and tabled with computers to make the process the easiest it could possibly be.

Throughout this semester we have continued to fight for the artists the students want to see. With an aggressive stance and a more persuasive bid, in addition to the fact that it was February and not December, we have done our job successfully.

I look forward to seeing everyone at the Spring Concert … featuring Mos Def. On behalf of ACPB, I sincerely apologize for our "failure" and "laziness."