With an overall attendance that has been reported to be around 500, this year’s edition of Frisk is considered by many to be disappointing. Despite former success, the annual event, with aims of bringing together over 30 University of Malta (UoM) student organisations, together with the rest of the student body, has failed to meet its targets this time round.
After receiving a number of comments from various individuals, The Third Eye decided to get in touch with key members of a number of Executive Committees of UoM student organisations. Their views were disclosed to The Third Eye on the understanding that the respective organisations’ identities will not be revealed.
The President of the first organisation contacted expressed that:
In my opinion, I believe that one of the primary reasons why yesterday’s event did not have the desired turnout was due to the fact that the overall feedback of last year’s party was negative. Furthermore, there was a great requirement for better promotion of the event this year, for it to have any chance of it regaining popularity, but instead the ticket price was doubled from five to ten euro.
Undoubtedly, the price hike of the party’s ticket was a determining factor that led to the event being far from successful. This is especially due to the fact that nowadays there are countless options when it comes to partying and nightlife.
I also believe that it is very unjust that the student based organisations are being assigned the blamed for the failure of the party, with no concrete reasons being given. One must bear in mind that the organisations themselves would have benefitted from a good attendance in this party and I cannot think of any rational reason why organisations should harm such events.
The second organisation contacted by The Third Eye were generous enough to share a print screen from their private group chat, containing remarks by the organisation’s Executive members about the event in question. The print screen obtained is the following:
Additionally, The Third Eye felt it only fair to get in touch Kunsill Studenti Universitarji’s Culture and Entertainment Co-Ordinator, Steve Zammit Lupi, for a statement in reaction to the whole situation. He informed us as follows:
The fact that UoM organisations were finding it difficult to sell tickets is understandable, but what worried me the most is that many of the executive members of such organisations did not even turn up to the event themselves. You start to wonder if there exists a problem between both sides that needs to be tackled. If yes we want to solve it.
To be fair, this year Denis and myself worked a lot to revamp our events. We also created the new University talent show concept, “Kokka Kampus” an incorporated it in the Campus Fest to revamp its image. This required a lot of extra hours during the summer months, but paid off very well amongst students. With regard to the price hike of Frisk’s tickets, this is justified by the increase of profit on each ticket that the involved organisations sold capped at 3.50e, coupled by the performance of an international headliner for the first time. We wanted to add something new, to freshen it up.
