More than 800 students filled the Anderson Athletic and Recreation Complex field house Saturday, Oct. 20, to see Grammy Award winning Colbie Caillat perform live.

Some undergraduate students started waiting outside the Anderson Athletic and Recreation Complex three hours before STAR’s annual fall concert.

Senior Jonathan Wadle said he enjoyed the opportunity to see Caillat.

“Colbie Caillat is not only a beautiful person with a beautiful voice, but she has a wonderful personality that she shared with the crowd this evening,” Wadle said.

Jese Ledbetter, assistant director of Campus Life, said the first step for choosing the fall concert artist was to look at which artists are looking to perform college shows.

“Not all artists are willing to accept college shows,” Ledbetter said. “They’re mostly interested in the big area shows.”

Ledbetter said this might soon be true for Caillat since Saturday’s St. Thomas show might be Caillat’s last college concert for some time.

“She’s going to be focusing more on arena shows and bigger shows,” Ledbetter said.

Junior Beth Cink said she thought it was great to have Caillat at St. Thomas.

“She really played off of how excited everyone was to have her here,” Cink said.

The concert ticket price was free and only open to St. Thomas students. Ledbetter said booking Caillat cost roughly $75,000, which included transportation and hotel fees for the 16 members of Caillat’s team.

“We try to make sure the students that are paying the activity fee can actually enjoy the show,” Ledbetter said. “We pride ourselves in trying to keep free concerts for students.”

The St. Thomas purchasing amendment has a clause that restricts different organizations as to what it can purchase, including artists to perform on-campus.

“In there it does talk about subject matter in terms of language and derogatory terms,” Ledbetter said. “That kind of gets into lyrics and what are they portraying in their lyrics.”

“We were trying to go for someone that a lot of students know,” sophomore Jimmy Froehling, a STAR intern, said.

In last year’s fall concert, country star Dierks Bentley drew a crowd of around 2,200 students, according to STAR.

Junior Katie Jacobsen enjoyed Caillat from the front row.

“It was awesome to see her so close and personal,” Jacobsen said. “It was like she was singing just to me.”

Caroline Rode can be reached at rode8318@stthomas.edu.