After last year’s notorious letdown, the Sun God Festival of legend was back in almost full force last Friday in nearly every corner of campus. Classrooms were empty, topless girls were storming the water slide, fire was going down in hoops and swallows in the Midway Tent and rolls upon rolls of toilet paper were flying over a crowd of sweaty, moshing students in the Dance Tent worshipping the mighty Girl Talk.
Although this year’s festival was ‘mdash; like last year ‘mdash; officially confined to RIMAC Field, the A.S. Concerts and Events Office deserves our sincerest thanks for throwing the party of the year, even if it meant sucking up additional activity fees and adopting a fun-in-the-sun aesthetic dangerously identical to Coachella’s. But hey ‘mdash; Coachella is awesome. Especially when it’s free, two minutes from your dorm and you get to see the curve-setter in your chemistry class dancing on stage in a headdress and loincloth.
Associate Vice President of Concerts and Events Garrett Berg had an entire university’s worth of knives to his throat, under immense pressure from the student body to bring the all-out debauchery back while simultaneously ensuring administrators they wouldn’t be left with thousands of dollars in fountain repairs and angry parental lawsuits come morning after. But with a few key changes ‘mdash; including unlimited in-and-out privileges and a lineup hot enough to motivate us over to RIMAC instead of passing out on the nearest grassy knoll ‘mdash; Berg and his office pumped out a festival that may not have been the uncaged T.I. landmark we’ll tell our grandchildren about, but came damn close and kept the police report under a novel in the meantime.
A.S. President Utsav Gupta vows he’ll work with individual college councils to sponsor smaller events like barbecues on the day of the festival next year, and bring student-org booths back to Library Walk (though he’s mysteriously dropped all that big talk of a day-of A.S. Bear Garden).
Only time will tell if administrators are capable of the miraculous change of heart Gupta will need to inspire in order to pull off such a large-scale plan. But in any case, it looks as if the days of various booths, stages and activities spread over Sun God Lawn and down to Price Center are probably not going to return in our day. That’s not to say that Concerts and Events shouldn’t build slowly and mischievously upon the successful festival format Berg and his team drew up for 2009 to mold the festival back into a campuswide affair. Though Student Center shenanigans saw a satisfactorily low level of regulation and the Koala never got their hose kinked for more than a few minutes (and the editorial board got lucky and found an opportune hose ready for the spraying in Price Center Fountain), the UCSD campus as a whole was depressingly deserted ‘mdash; in no small part thanks to that ridiculous wristband line.
Concerts and Events should streamline the wristband chore by employing multiple pickup locations and increasing the number of lanes at each station ‘mdash; and we should all do our sneaky part in ensuring that Sun God only gets better from here.