Most Aggies look forward to three main events, Homecoming, Aggie Fest and graduation.
To some students, this year’s Aggie Fest had a lackluster calendar of events. Missing from this year’s festivities was the Aggie Fest concert.
The Aggie Fest celebration has been the same for the past three years. It has included a Residence Hall step show, a block party and a concert.
Not only was there no Aggie Fest Concert, but the 90’s gym jam was cancelled because of a campus lockdown earlier in the day.
Many students were disappointed because a survey was handed out in the beginning of the year asking who they would like to see perform during Aggie Fest.
“For there not to be a concert is mind-blowing,” said Shawn Jackson, a senior public relations major from Charlotte.
Trouble with booking performers caused issues when planning the concert.
“There were some conflicts with scheduling the performer that was most popular with the campus,” said SGA Secretary Patrick Malichi. “The decision was made to let the Triad Music Festival take the place of the normal Aggie Fest concert.”
SUAB President Bryan Keller provided information on how many performers the school was planning to have. “We were looking at about two main artists and a couple smaller acts to be in the show,” Keller said.
In past year’s, the Aggie Fest concert took place on Saturday.
Instead, the only event that took place on Saturday was the Buscuitville 7 Campus Scramble at 8 a.m. Students were left with no Aggie Fest festivities for the remainder of the weekend.
Keller went on to explain the process for setting up the concert and how ultimately plans fell through.
“The first step in planning the concert was finding out who students wanted to perform. After that, we find out what surrounding schools would like to perform at their spring concert, and then it’s our job to find a happy medium.”
“After finding an artist that would appease students at A&T, Guilford College and UNCG [SUAB] had to set a date. We experienced difficulty pinning down dates because our Aggie Fest dates didn’t match up with the artist’s availability,” said Keller. He finished by stating, “In the end, the negotiation wouldn’t have been feasible for the students.” When asked what SUAB should do next year to avoid this situation he answered, “Start earlier. If we get the ball rolling earlier, we will be able to knock out some of the kinks and have more flexibility with the artist.”
Dr. Buggs in the Office of Student Activities & Campus Involvement explained that the Office of Student Activities orchestrated the negotiations between the artist. In the end, the office came to the conclusion of canceling the concert. “Kendrick Lamar was not available the week of Aggie Fest. We were able to land a concert date but not until later in the semester, which didn’t work for us because Aggie Fest needs to be one week,” she said. “If it can’t fall within the week then the concert can’t happen.” She continued by expressing that the idea that Aggie Fest should be one inclusive week was important to administration and that if they would had let Aggie Fest drag out a couple of weeks just to accommodate the concert, next year students may expect two or three concerts. “The other concern with planning the concert was a budgetary one,” she said.
“The reality is that we share the costs with two or three other universities,” said Buggs. “When we could not get the dates to work for all the schools involved, the best we could do was to get a block of tickets to support Kendrick Lamar’s concert and give them out during the week of Aggie Fest.”
Buggs feels that the trend is kind of to move away from the concert and do more with Aggie Fest, like activities.
“Overall, Aggie Fest this year was good but it could’ve been a lot better,” said Jackson. “The Aggie Fest experience that I’ve been accustomed to since my freshman year was definitely not displayed this spring.”
- Shelby Christie, Contributor