The Auburn University Honors Congress is staging its first ShamROCK concert March 4 from 8:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. to raise money for its Students for Students Program.

This philanthropic program helps students in less developed countries attend college and university.

The concert will be held in the new student center ballroom at the university. Tickets to the event can be purchased in advance for $10 on the AU concourse. They are $12 at the door. T-shirts will also be on sale for $10 to all who attend the event.

“Hopefully we will be able to use all the proceeds to pay for philanthropy,” Shelli Brown, a coordinator for ShamROCK, said.

Brown said that people often forget how lucky they are to have access to education in this country. The congress will be bringing both awareness and aid to the issue.

Some of the proceeds may have to go towards the cost of the event she said. However, all of the bands featured in the concert are donating their time for the event. Food and refreshments are being provided by the student center.

Those who attend the event will be registered for door prizes. Brown said they will periodically have name drawings throughout the event.

“The idea is for people to hang out and have fun,” Brown said.

There will be four bands playing at the event. Bands that are usually paid like Hightide Blues and Psychic Antennae offered their time for the cause. There will also be two other bands. Fallback, a local band, and Calooh! Callay!, a band out of Tuscaloosa.

Brown said that she thinks it will be okay inviting a band from the town of AU’s rival school the University of Alabama. “I think what is keeping us from having problems is that it is not football season,” she said jokingly.

The bands were not hard to recruit, Brown said. “There is a huge list of willing bands.”

The Honors College wants to make ShamROCK an annual event. This year the concert will be themed after Woodstock. The idea came from Chayla Handley, the spirit chair for the Honors College. Brown said that St. Patrick’s Day was Handley’s favorite holiday, and she thought it would be clever to base the name of the event off of the pun shamrock.

Along with members of the Honors College, Brown is being helped by the philanthropy chair Brianna Dailey, the social chair Ashley Helton and the president of the Honors College Linnea Pepper.

The emcee for the event will be Andrew Kinnaird. Brown said that the funny and entertaining Kinnaird will be in charge of the door prizes.

The Honors Congress is part of the Honors College at Auburn University. It operates similarly to the Student Government Association. Their philanthropic efforts are apart of the SGA Spirit Point program. The congress meets throughout the year every other Monday of the month.

Planning for the event started at the beginning of October 2008. Brown said that is has been a big undertaking, and that it took lots of planning and work to bring the event together. She said that hopefully next year’s group will just have to fill in the blanks.

Ultimately, the Honors College has one goal in mind.

“We just want everybody to be able to come out and have fun and enjoy the music and be able to raise money for a good cause at the same time,” Brown said.


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