A new rule was activated at the Daily office last week: no more freakin’ columns about Veishea.

Well, I’ve never been one to go by the rules.

I spent most of the afternoon on Saturday talking to organizers, performers and crowd members at Together Fest and if there was one common theme of every conversation it was Veishea.

GSB President Rob Wiese was the first to bring up the topic. “Veishea could be something like this,” he said.

When I mentioned the topic to Ames Area Artist founder and Together Fest coordinator Justin Means he had one word for me: “Exactly.”

“This is what we need to do,” he said. “Get local bands to play all day and have a big name headliner at night.”

A headliner — another word that seemed to pop up a lot on Saturday. “It would be cool to do this with a good headliner,” one crowd member said.

A few weeks ago, Iowa State President Martin Jischke came into the Daily office to talk to reporters about the proposal he was going to announce that night.

Always looking to get in on the latest juicy Jischke gossip, I invited myself to sit in for the meeting (I even took the chair right next to Jischke).

He read through the speech he was going to give that night and opened it up for questions. I felt a little out of place but I just had to ask him.

If Veishea continues this year, will there be more support for entertainment?

I wasn’t taking notes, but his answer was something along the lines of “Absolutely — I will support better entertainment with both my ideas and my pocket book.”

Rock on, I remember thinking.

Anyway, his suggestion, as well as many others, is to move the Taste of Veishea event from Welch Avenue to the Iowa State Center.

The idea is to have all kinds of great entertainment, both local and national, to keep students’ minds off of their old Veishea ways. Pretty brilliant.

It just so happened I ran into Veishea co-chair Ben Dohrmann later that night and he was as excited as I was about how awesome entertainment for Veishea 1998 could be.

He mentioned the possibility of working with the Iowa State Center to open up the football stadium and bring in a national act each night.

Because I first met Dohrmann when I was the Terrace Music coordinator for Veishea two years ago, he asked if I would be interested in the project and we talked a little about what kind of band would go over best.

He suggested The Wallflowers. I suggested Vanilla Ice. He withdrew the invitation to work with him.

But back to my point. Live music has always come second to drinking at ISU and it’s about time we change that.

Alcohol was prohibited at Together Fest on Saturday and I am guessing there was still close to 500 people there. And that was only for local entertainment.

Just imagine if these local bands are paired up with 311, Rusted Root, Verve Pipe or the Beastie Boys. Rock on.

Students need to take Together Fest as an indication that live music always prevails over a good buzz.

I encourage anyone who is interested in an awesome weekend of entertainment at ISU to pledge to keep alcohol off campus for Veishea weekend.

The money is there. The support is there. It is up to the students to seize the opportunity.

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Corey Moss is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.