Trey Parker was a great pick for Central Michigan University students

Central Michigan University held one of its better events of the last two years when South Park co-creator Trey Parker came to visit Monday.

And it did not cost a dime for the students or the university.

Parker spoke to students in Warriner Hall’s Plachta Auditorium at
1 p.m. and at 7 p.m. in his first-ever campus visit.

He came because he is related to former journalism faculty member Elliot Parker and has distant family around the area.

CMU programming should take note of this. Students obviously wanted to see the co-creator of one of television’s most popular comedies.

They asked him questions, had a few laughs and overall enjoyed making the trip to Plachta Auditorium.

Compare that to last Friday, when rapper Fabolous and band Day 26 came to Rose Arena.

Long waits, a dreary turnout and a gaffe by Fabolous’ DJ (he greeted Michigan
State instead of CMU) plagued what could have been a better planned performance.

Program Board and On The Fly went from charging up to $22 to go to the show to giving tickets away for free at Wares Fair last Thursday.

And the price tag on that performance? $25,000, at least, for CMU programming.

Compare that to Parker’s lower-key visit, which consisted of him talking South Park and answering questions students submitted. Parker, who also had a hand in the film “Team America: World Police,” talked about his philosophy of South Park as a middle ground between extremists.

“No topic is off limits to the show” Parker said. “For me, it’s all or nothing.”

In short, the interaction was inspirational and personal with the students, and reached out to a much larger campus body.

Reassessing the situation

Elliot Parker deserves a lot of credit for bringing Trey to campus, and at no cost, for that matter.

Obviously, this is a rare occasion that happened to work out in the best interest of CMU.

It would be farfetched to expect this to happen regularly.

But it shows that someone associated with the university is thinking creatively and is capable of bringing in someone students want to see.

Program Board and On the Fly Productions are more than capable of doing the same thing. They have done it before.

T-Pain, Ludacris, Demetri Martin and Dane Cook are all testaments to the great acts students flocked to in the past.

More people on campus should think outside the box like Elliot did and find other ways (and connections) to get appealing people on campus to talk to the students and faculty.

Sometimes, as Elliot showed, it doesn’t take a single dollar.