Preparation for the 2009 Sun God Festival began earlier this month with the release of the A.S. programming department’s comprehensive festival-planning report. The 23-page document outlines plans for a festival identical in format to the event’s safety-oriented 2008 incarnation, though programming officials have indicated the possibility of decreased security, a new Internet-based wristband retrieval system and unrestricted re-entry.
Throughout preliminary planning stages for this year’s festival, A.S. Associate Vice President of Programming and chief Sun God organizer Garrett Berg has stressed the goal of reinventing the event within its new, safer format. Berg’s department faced widespread criticism after last year’s festival, which many students claimed violated the traditional Sun God spirit by restricting the day’s events to an enclosed RIMAC Field and eliminating the no-boundaries, campuswide format that had characterized the festival for the previous 10 years.
‘In the 2008 planning report, our goals were all about security, because we really wanted to revamp the festival in order to be able to continue to have it,’ Berg said, referring to threats by campus administrators in 2007 to dramatically curtail the event if security concerns were not addressed. ‘This year, it’s much more about having this new format and deciding how to make it better for the students.’
John Muir College senior Daniel Dadon ‘mdash; who, after last year’s festival, started a Facebook group encouraging students to voice their concerns over the new format ‘mdash; said that he was most discouraged by the lack of mobility and absence of independently administered attractions throughout campus at Sun God last year.
‘I really didn’t like how they corralled the students and didn’t let us have our whole-campus Sun God like we used to,’ Dadon said. ‘We weren’t able to be on Library Walk. We weren’t able to be in Price Center. The festival just wasn’t happening there.’
Although this year’s main attractions will still be staged entirely on RIMAC Field, Berg hinted at plans to expand the event into other areas of campus.
‘We feel there are ways to make it feel like Sun God across campus,’ Berg said. ‘Last year it definitely didn’t feel like Sun God. We realize that. Even if every single student had gone to the festival, it still wouldn’t have felt like Sun God. So what we’re looking into are ways we can create the Sun God atmosphere across campus
.’
Berg described preliminary suggestions for achieving this goal, including holding individual Sun God kickoff events within each of the six colleges and staging a student’shy;-organization fair on the day of the festival.
Changes to the festival’s primary events will include the elimination of the north stage, which last year hosted a number of local music acts, and will be replaced by an enormous tent featuring continuous deejay sets throughout the day.
Berg also discussed the adoption of a new wristband retrieval system that will require students to register online for entrance to the event. Wristbands will then be distributed upon entry into RIMAC Field, and attendees will be allowed to enter and exit the venue freely.
Though precise security logistics for the 2009 festival remain undetermined, Berg said he hopes that the success of last year’s dramatically increased safety measures in deterring arrests will convince campus administrators to consider looser security for this year’s event. The insistence of campus administrators on heightened security in 2008 resulted in a $35,000 police bill for the programming department ‘mdash; an increase of $20,000 from 2007. Accordingly, last year’s festival yielded 55 percent fewer arrests than were reported at the 2007 event.
‘Ideally I would love to see that [price of security] go back to $15,000,’ Berg said. ‘I think that, for me, the most difficult thing is that we moved to an undeniably safer festival, so why we’re spending $20,000 more is my question. At the end of the day, we spent $15,000 at what was a very problematic festival, so why are we spending $35,000 at what was unanimously decided to be a successful festival?’
UCSD Police Chief Orville King said he believes the 2008 festival was a relative success when compared to the event’s prior incarnations, though he said he is unsure in such early stages of planning as to what sort of security levels may be present at this year’s event.
‘I think last year’s festival was certainly an improvement over previous years,’ King said. ‘The event was well-organized, and we had fewer problems as a result of the way the event was set up. But we really don’t know where the event is going or how the event is being planned. We really need to see what the plan is before we can make [a plan for security].’
Berg said his department has already confirmed two of the festival’s headlining acts, and while verifying that the primary headliner will be a hip-hop act, Berg plans to withhold the names of all acts until Spring Quarter. Though working with a budget similar to that of 2008, Berg said that Sun God 2009’s musical selections will dramatically improve upon last year’s.
‘Our headliners for this year so far, both of them, are so much better than our headliner last year,’ Berg said.
Readers can contact Reza Farazmand at [email protected].