With an average of 100 students this year at Programming Council social events, attendance is just not cutting it for Council leaders.Alina Tennie, Programming Council chair, said the group is having trouble competing with students’ other social interests.

“It’s really hard to pull the interest of students without alcohol and partying,” Tennie said. “We normally never schedule an event on a Thursday or Friday night because we know that no one will show up.”

Tennie said Programming Council held a luau in the week before Spring Break, where many students came for food and then left without participating in the planned events.

Some suggest the Council should change how it spends its money in an effort to increase attendance.

“People obviously have an issue with how our money is spent but when no one comes forward with suggestions, it is difficult to know what to do about the problem,” Tennie said.

The financial chair of Programming Council, Ross Morgan said that the Programming Council has a budget of $139,000 a year.

“Personally, I think that the Council should use the budget for scheduling a few large events instead of a lot of small ones because more students will attend,” Morgan said.

Larry Markley, Programming Council adviser and Student Center director, said it is difficult to get students to come to events because of the lack of space for a large group of people.

“In the new student union, there will be 352 seats in the new auditorium and we would be happy to fill up every one of those seats,” Markley said.

Tennie said the Programming Council’s purpose is to provide quality programming and give TCU a sense of community structure.

Through the years, Programming Council has used different methods to try to promote its events.

“We change up the events all the time and everything we do seems to be trial and error,” Tennie said.

Markley said boosting attendance has always been a struggle at TCU because it is difficult to get students to stay on campus with all the entertainment the Metroplex already has to provide.

“Philosophies of the lack of attendance have changed over the years and the best thing that we can do about it is constantly promote our events and hope that students will show up,” Markley said.