by KRISTIN LARMORE
Lifestyles Reporter

The overhead lights fade, the beer sign illuminates and the soundboard gleams against the flicker of the spotlights.

Student nightclub Legends is open for business, but the student employees have been at the club for at least an hour, and they will remain there for another hour or so once the rowdy patrons depart, leaving their trash and the salty smell of sweat behind. 

A unique on-campus job opportunity, Legends allows its employees to work in an upbeat college atmosphere.

“It was my first job in college and it was a really cool thing for me because not only was I working, but hearing cool bands,” junior geography major Katie N. Anthony said.

Typically, Anthony said employees work 10 to 15 hours per week, depending on the show and how long it lasts, but student managers work more.

Student Services Specialist Paul D. Ford hires the student employees at Legends.

Senior music industry studies major J. Nolan McKew, another employee at Legends, said qualified applicants are levelheaded, trustworthy people with common sense.

The day Anthony interviewed with Ford last January, he was up front with her about the requirements, and even asked her to work the sold-out Sister Hazel concert that very night.

Anthony feels the easiest part of the job is working with great people.

She recalled during one show, the staff took advantage of a slow point by doing the electric slide behind the bar.

Anthony said the four student managers jokingly argue they’re “better” than the general employee “red shirts” because they have khaki shirts with more buttons.

“The more buttons you have the cooler you are,” Anthony said with an amused eye roll.

The tight-knit group often sings into brooms when dead tired at 1 a.m. or so to pass the time. Plenty of work is involved, though.
Student managers are given more responsibility with extra meetings, separate training sessions, longer hours, keys to the building and knowledge of important switch locations.

“They are excellent. They are the ones who have been there the longest,” Student Programs Coordinator Randy M. Kelly said.

Late nights are an important aspect, as well. Sometimes, employees and student managers cannot leave until 2 a.m.

Working at the venue requires a special level of responsibility, including knowledge of the university’s liability issues regarding drinking and an ability to be unbiased toward friends or acquaintances.

Anthony has the confidence to check anyone’s ID, face confrontation and be persistent when students don’t follow the rules, even if they are friends.

McKew said in addition to drunk people, he had an even more interesting encounter with one visitor.

“I saw this blank, almost crazy evil look on his face. And he just face-planted right in front of me,” he said.

He said it was the creepiest thing he has seen there.

Employees are required to take a three-hour certification class in which they role-play various situations like this that could occur, Kelly explained.

This campus is currently the only one in the country that has a national, student-run nightclub, so it serves as a model for other universities, Kelly said.

Though the employees want students to feel it’s their nightclub, “the students [employee’s] role is only to be a convergence from incidence to police officer,” Kelly said, as one is present at every event.

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