ON CAMPUS — In all likelihood, you were drying some tears
after A.S. programmers announced a small-name, albeit more eclectic lineup for
this year’s Sun God Festival. But it’s a near certainty that the festival to
you is like the Oscars, the Grammys or any other large-scale event: Who knows how it happens? It just does.
Given that administrators pushed this year for the
festival’s first sweeping facelift in its 25-year history, programmers are
hailing every financial resource to support larger costs and damn near everyone
is lamenting the fact that Sean Kingston’s only listenable song is “Take You
There,” a bubbly shit-fest where the puffed-up crooner reps his cred in both
the hood and the tropics, students should now take a stronger, vested interest
in the event that every Triton holds so dear.
The story of this year’s lineup could be published in reams
of context. But simply put, more small-time acts were booked for a bigger
festival, and the trend will continue until programming can scrounge up more
funding to return the billing to its former headlining glory of T.I. and
Ludacris. Even worse, programmers are now essentially trying to make more out
of less, hoping to meet the rising costs of security and inflation without
financial help from administrators.
Now comes the context. Disappointment with the programming
office about this year’s headliner, Coheed and
may be alleviated with even just a superficial understanding of the booking
process. As the reporter on the Guardian’s programming beat, I’ve found such an
understanding rather comforting; the complex, ultimately random, process of
booking acts helped me steam a little less two years back when emo-trash My
Chemical Romance was announced as the headliner, and feel blessed by a miracle
last year when top-40 rapper T.I. played.
Although popular belief has programmers engaging agents in
purely wallet-related negotiations, the booking process depends on an
inextricable bundle of factors, none that ultimately take precedence over the
other. The artist must be available, which means they probably are on the
concert circuit promoting new material, students have to have expressed at
least some interest in that artist and the price has to be right.
Displeased students often construe disappointment with the
lineup as a problem with a stingy programming office. Because if price was the
only concern, why not devote more money to booking attention-hungry acts and
less to festival amenities? For the right price, couldn’t UCSD have booked
Mariah Carey to pump those famous pipes for her new album E=MC2? Could
programmers have brought Ray-J to campus with his newest crowd-pleaser “Sexy
Can I?” Or R.E.M. to promote their new album Accelerate? But programmers are
already grasping at financial straws, relying on student volunteers and new
staff to rope in sponsorships at both small business and corporate levels.
Festival Director Garrett Berg said his office has been forced into a stage of
creative cost cutting. Methods include partnerships with pizza restaurants for
donations, so that the department won’t have to pay for food given to
volunteers. If programmers are worried about the money needed to feed their own
staff, then they are obviously a far cry from affording Mariah-caliber price
tags.
However, the saddest episode in the Sun God saga brings
administrators into the fold. It was their fervent outcry, chronicled in the
ridiculously extensive Sun God Planning Report, that sparked the move toward
the larger, community-oriented and ultimately more expensive festival. Now,
programmers are left in the cold after receiving no financial aid from Vice
Chancellor of Student Affairs Penny Rue to defray security costs. Rue had
ironically been one of the most vocal supporters of security upgrades and a new
festival, but her decision made it evident that students will be have to finish
something that administrators started.
This month’s activity fee survey is another harbinger:
Students overwhelmingly selected the Sun God Festival as their desired
recipient of the campus’ next possible referendum. That means that if you want
a better Sun God lineup, you’ll have to pay for it.
