Meet this week’s Campus Celebrity! UNH senior and president of SCOPE, Ian Standish has spent his four years here in a pretty cool way. To learn more about Ian, keep reading this week’s Her Campus exclusive interview!
Name: Ian Standish
Hometown: Manchester, NH
Grade: Senior
Major: Recreation Management and Policy (RMP): Program Administration
Activities/Clubs: SCOPE
When did you first get involved with SCOPE?
I was hired second semester of my Freshman year. I was seriously contemplating transferring after my first semester and was looking for something to get involved in. I found SCOPE and haven’t thought about leaving since.
What is your role as president?
As Executive Director I oversee all operations of SCOPE. We do everything from booking the show, to loading everything out of the venue after the show and everything in between. There are 25 of us total and 5 other members on the Exec board. We all come together to get everything done and I kind of oversee and facilitate that process I guess.
What is the coolest part about being in SCOPE?
The opportunities the organization gives you is really crazy sometimes. I get offers to work shows in the area all of the time just because they know that we know what were doing and we do it so well. It gives you so many chances to learn so much more than just the generic stuff you learn in a classroom.
Do you get to hang out with the performers at all? What is that like?
It all depends on the artist. Rarely do we ever have time to really hang out with the artist on the day of the show because we have so many other things that need to get done to put on a show, but sometimes the artists are nice enough to do a quick meet and greet. Usually just a quick handshake and a picture then we’re back to work. It’s always interesting to see what a person is like out of the spotlight. Logic, for example, was one of the nicest people we have ever worked for. He was just as excited to be here as we were to have him. It was really cool to see how normal and genuine he was.
Who was your favorite performer?
This is a tough question for so many different reasons. My freshman year we brought J. Cole and my Junior year we brought Kendrick Lamar. When we booked both of them, they were just starting to get big. Cole only had Sideline Story and Kendrick was weeks away from dropping the Control verse. It’s really cool to think about how big these two have gotten and we were able to get them in the Whitt.
Lee Brice is coming up in a couple of weeks. Are you excited about the country performer?
Yeah I’m really excited. We haven’t been able to land a country show since my freshman year when Eli Young Band came and it’s been way overdue. The reaction from this campus has been crazy. We were able to sell out our first show in 5 years and we did it in 10 days. It’s a pretty great way to end my time at UNH.
UNH Favorites:
Favorite Dining Hall? Philly all day.
Favorite Study Place? Nothing beats sitting on T-Hall lawn when the weather’s nice. If I actually want to get work done though, I should be in Dimond.
Favorite UNH Memory?
Probably the Kendrick Lamar concert. SCOPE was coming off a pretty tough year of petitioning the school just to remain an organization. I was one of like 8 people who were able to stay in the organization and help rebuild it from the ground up. We wanted to come back with a bang so we went big and booked Kendrick. It was a huge success and it was such a relief that all of the work from the last year was worth it.