Rondelet profits for first time in history

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by Angelique Siy

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For what may be the first time in history, Rondelet made a $694 profit for the Rice Program Council this year.

The dance traditionally held on the day of Beer-Bike, took place in the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Its theme was "Somewhere in Time."

"To my knowledge, this is the first time in recent history that a formal has made money; in fact, the RPC budgets a loss of $2,000 for each formal," Travis Hopp, 1995-'96 RPC treasurer said.

"The RPC Formals Committee -- Merritt Thomas, [Christina] Torres and Melissa Boddie -- did a terrific job in planning, and the college representatives did an awesome job of selling a record number of tickets," Hopp said. Residential college representatives sold 952 tickets.

As a result, the RPC will have more money for programming next year.

"While many of us on RPC were concerned that increasing ticket prices from $30 to $40 a couple would hurt attendence, the opposite has ocurred," Hopp said.

"By allowing the Formals Committee to select the best locations and have excellent bands and food, the extra cost is definitely worthwhile."

Torres said, "Mostly, I think it was the publicity and getting everyone excited.

" Lots of people were really excited that it was going to be at the museum, and people who knew who the band was were really excited about hearing them.

"And those who enjoyed Esperanza might also have figured that Rondelet would be good, too."

"I think the location attracted a lot of people who don't normlly go to formal, because it gave them more things to do rather than dance," Thomas said. "It was something different, not just a hotel. People were really excited about it."

Apparently, securing the museum facilities for the dance was not difficult since the museum contacts were "really cooperative," according to Thomas.

"But we needed a million dollar liability," Thomas added.

Luckily,the planning was mostly completed before winter break, since Boddie was away this semester.

"[Planning] ran really really smoothly. It was really easy to cooordinate once it got past the laywers with the liability insurance," Boddie said.

This item appeared in the News section of the April 12, 1996 issue.

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