Sophie Brown ‘28
Photo by Willow Brown ‘27
Just a week before Sarah Lawrence College’s (SLC) annual Rocky Horror Picture Show was supposed to open, directors Ayla Kocak ‘28 and Frankie “E” Burbank ‘28 were forced to make a nearly impossible decision: pay out of pocket for the movie rights or cancel the show altogether.
Rocky Horror on SLC campus has been a time-honored tradition for almost fifty years, having presumably started in the late seventies. A show for “unconventional conventionalists,” it finds its place perfectly amongst SLC’s multi-faceted student body. In the wake of Tim Curry’s passing, the original Frank N’ Furter, and the fact that Rocky Horror is currently on Broadway, this year’s show was to be extra special. But, as it turned out, so were the rights to the movie. “We got the quote to pay them last week, and they were like, ‘It's actually twelve hundred dollars now.’” This is double what the movie rights were last year. Kocak said they were frantic in emailing the Office of Student Life (OSIL) to alter their budget request so they could afford the rights to the movie, along with supplying actors with costumes and food, but it was too late. “We met with OSIL and said, ‘Hi, could you give us more money, by any chance,’ and they said, ‘No, we can’t do that.’”
Because the Rocky Horror production is its own club on campus, it had to go through student budgeting requests, which operate on a seasonal basis. Kocak detailed, “They have budget periods. Because our budget request happened in the fall senate period, we couldn’t request more funding because the window was closed.” Club budgeting meetings happen once a month, and the approval process can take more time on top of that. Once all the budget requests have been made, OSIL has no extra funds for that season that they can allocate to unforeseen club needs, such as this. “The reason why they couldn’t request again was because of the way the budgeting system operates, unfortunately,” stated Marianna Apazidis, one of the student leadership graduate advisors. OSIL gave them two options: wait for the next budget period, which happens in December, or cancel the show.
Kocak and Burbank decided neither of these options would work, so they pulled together their own money in order to pay for the rights. “Ayla said they were willing to pay for it out of pocket, but that it would take two and a half paychecks from their on-campus job,” Burbank added. “So we made a GoFundMe,” said Kocak. “And the response was magical.” Within four hours, they had reached their goal of $300 dollars. Kocak was in the shower when they found out, and came out of the bathroom to show their roommates, happy tears streaming down their face. But even after the goal had been reached, people continued donating. “Yesterday morning, we had an additional $110, so now we have our budget back for cast party food.”
Through reposts and student donations alone, $410 was raised, and one of the oldest traditions on campus was saved.
