Yardfest, A Shrinking Stage?

On a Friday evening last April, 8,500 ticket-holders crammed onto the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field. With the arena full to capacity, both undergraduates and guests raged to the beats of indie rock band Passion Pit and electronic dance music DJ Tiësto.

“I had no idea what I was going into,” says Jayshlyn D. Acevedo ’14, who attended Penn’s Spring Fling in 2012. “Penn, I think, is out of this world. I’ve never been to a state school, but I can’t even imagine it. That was absurd. Everyone’s involved and to the highest level.”

At Penn, Spring Fling represents more than just a concert that occurs on one night every year: it’s a highly anticipated celebration that lasts all weekend long.

The following Sunday of that same week last year, Harvard undergraduates gathered in Tercentenary Theater. When musical group Das Racist took the stage on the stairs of Memorial Church, they addressed the sparse crowd: “What’s up, you drunk overprivileged shits?” Harvard students were not amused.

Though outcry has erupted this year over the invitation of rapper Tyga to perform at Yardfest, this is not the first time there have been student complaints about Yardfest as a whole. While other colleges throw massively attended spring concerts, Harvard’s iteration consistently meets a more tempered reception.

The failure of Harvard’s Yardfest to garner strong support from students has been attributed to a number of factors—poor selection of artists, limited funds, administrative oversight, and lack of an overall party culture among them. Though there are a variety of logistical issues that have restricted student planners of the concert, it is the absence of an entrenched culture around Yardfest that speaks to a broader lack of cohesion among College students in regards to social life.

THE GOLDEN YEARS

The predecessor of today’s Yardfest originated in 1994, and the festival has since taken on different names and formats. In those nearly 20 years the event has evolved in fits and starts and an adequate source of funding and positive reception have never been certain.

Former Undergraduate Council President Carey W. Gabay ’94 conceived the concept of Yardfest in 1994 to unify the campus in a single event, following criticisms that he had done little to enhance social life at the College. However, the event—renamed Springfest in 1995—did not necessarily accomplish this task. For the next few years, low attendance rates and lack of funds plagued student planners.

Prospects brightened in 2002, when former University President Lawrence H. Summers offered to cosponsor Springfest, following the results of surveys showing a lack of community cohesion at the College.

“Larry Summers listened to these survey results, which were quite dramatic, and made a conscious effort to address the issue,” former director of the Harvard Concert Commission Justin H. Haan ’05 says.

Haan emphasizes the importance of the enhanced financial backing from the University on the success of these events.

“Without those funds there was no way the events could have occurred. Funding of this sort should be institutionalized,” Haan says.

In 2004, Busta Rhymes performed at the Lavietes Pavilion to a crowd of about 3,000 to strongly positive student feedback, and Bob Dylan rocked Gordon Track and Tennis Center to a sold-out audience of students and community members.

Although these events were extremely well received, the ideal of a popular outdoor concert in Harvard Yard had yet to be realized.

“It was very important to me that Harvard Yard felt like it was the center of our campus. Although we lived in and walked through the Yard, it was rarely a place where College students could congregate comfortably,” says Haan, who stayed on after his graduation to become the campus life fellow at the Office of Student Activities, which has since been absorbed by the Office of Student Life.

In 2006, responsibility for planning the annual spring concert shifted from the Undergraduate Council to the Harvard Concert Commission and the newly minted College Events Board. Once again with support from Summers, students secured Ben Folds as the performer for Yardfest. Folds played to a jovial crowd of undergraduates who were throwing beach balls and flying on tire swings through the typically stately Yard.

With a system of event planning in place, which put students in charge of organizing the concert, Yardfest achieved more consistent attendance. Over 7,000 people showed to hear Sara Bareilles and Ratatat play in 2009. In 2010, Kid Cudi drew an audience of 4,500, followed by a crowd of over 7,000 for headliner Far East Movement in 2011, when Yardfest coincided with Visitas.

Though Yardfest has had successful years such as those, even its record audiences have paled in comparison to those of other schools. And since Yardfest has also failed to maintain audiences of those numbers, there’s still much to be reconciled with the original intention of a unifying, spirited event for students.

NO FUN WITHOUT FUNDING

That Yardfest has been firmly established as a yearly student-engineered event in Harvard Yard certainly stands as a victory for those who originally envisioned it. Yet according to many, it has failed to cement itself as an anticipated occasion in the social calendars of students at the College. Students throw around a number of explanations for why this has failed to be the case, with lack of adequate budget topping many’s lists.

Limited funds have hampered the planners of Yardfest from putting on the raging concert that they would hope to bring to life. “In my experience, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which sets the College’s budget, does not see the value in campus-wide events and as a result has not provided the College with a meaningful budget for these types of events,” Haan says.

At a university with an endowment that far outnumbers those of its peer institutions, one would imagine that funds for a student concert would be easily flowing. However, in 2012 The Crimson reported that student planners were constrained by the $30,000 in funds allocated by the OSL. The OSL would not disclose the budget for this year’s Yardfest. A prevailing assumption holds that other universities funnel much larger sums into their spring concerts, which Harvard students often lament are far superior to Yardfest.

One such event, Slope Day—an event at Cornell University on the last day of spring semester classes—allocated $167,523 to the concert portion of the day alone, with the entire budget totalling $316,934.26, in 2011. That year 17,500 attended the event, outnumbering the undergraduate student population of slightly over 14,000. Yang C. Zhao, Slope Day Chair, characterizes the event: “It’s a time when kids can look back on all the work they’ve done and just cut loose.”

The Slope Day Programming Board applies for funding via the Cornell Student Assembly every two years. The tuition and fees all Cornell undergraduates pay include a $229 student activity fee, from which the student government allocates $18 per student to fund Slope Day. Additional funds are made by selling tickets to alumni and guests of students, who can pay a $25 fee to attend if they purchase tickets over a week before the show.

At Penn, all students pay for tickets to attend the concert portion of Spring Fling. Tickets to the concert on Franklin Field purchased in advance cost $35 for students and $45 for the general public. Penn students can arrange for guest passes to the smaller music events and carnival activities that take place on Penn’s Quad, which are free for undergraduates.

Yet, at Harvard, the College remains committed to keeping Yardfest free of charge for students. “It is a high priority for the College to ensure that there are no barriers to participation to events that are designed to include the entire undergraduate student body,” Kenneth A. Parreno ’11, a student life fellow at the OSL, wrote in a statement to The Crimson.

Advocates of a ticketed concert say that the requirement to purchase a ticket may create a self-selecting group of hardcore concertgoers, while the rest of the student body chooses to spend their time elsewhere. “Because you have to purchase a ticket, I think the people that want to go are really excited about going,” Acevedo says. “However, the people who don’t go don’t feel left out because there’s other things going on at the same time, so there’s just always something to do.”

Yet some students appreciate that the event is free at Harvard. “I think when it actually comes to it, I like that it is free. I like that Harvard thinks a lot about economic concerns of people,” Acevedo remarks.

“You can only achieve the end of putting on an event that facilitates a sense of campus community if it is free for all College students,” Haan says.

AUDIO FEEDBACK

The goals of Yardfest planners closely match those of student organizers of similar events at Harvard’s peer institutions—bringing students together for an inclusive event to relax and cut loose. Factors beyond money may limit Harvard’s ability to achieve this goal.

“[Penn has] so many fraternities and sororities that they have a lot of outside space, social spaces that are not necessarily [overseen] by the University,” Acevedo remarks.

Those alternative social areas may have provided students at Penn with a variety of spring events to attend. Meanwhile, Harvard students are generally funneled into the Yard for a few hours to attend a concert; however, this is not necessarily detrimental to Yardfest itself. In 2011, when Yardfest coincided with Visitas—the visiting program for admitted students to the College—the concert drew a record number of attendees to the Yard for performers Far East Movement, Sam Adams, and White Panda.

“Pre-frosh weekend, I thought, was amazing and was actually a selling-point for me,” says Linda Zhang ’15, who attended Yardfest in 2011 as a senior in high school. “Not that I was going to turn down Harvard, but it was definitely something that drew me more to the school because you see the fun side. Harvard isn’t just a great school where people study and do great things with their lives, but it’s also a place where people can have fun.”

This experience gave Zhang the perception that Harvard had a vibrant party culture, where students could come together. “It wasn’t something that I quite expected. The concert was crazy and I was like ‘Ah! This must be what college is like everyday.’ So it was a little misleading in that sense.”

This year, student protest mounted when the CEB and Concert Commission announced the choice of rapper Tyga as the headliner for Yardfest. Students signed a petition urging administrators to cancel the performance, citing the artist’s lyrics as “explicitly and violently misogynistic.” Ultimately, the CEB and Concert Commission opted to delay Tyga’s start time but retain him as a performer. This situation has raised questions about what types of art Harvard should promote and what role Yardfest plays in this endorsement.

The choice of the rapper came from student-run committees, who solicited fellow students' opinions and views through a survey sent out in the fall in which the majority of undergraduates expressed interest in a Top 40 artist. By all means, Tyga is a popular artist who has produced chart-topping hits. However, many students expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the choice, and the OSL even asked the CEB to reconsider its decision to book the rapper.

An audience of 17,500 showed up at Cornell in 2011 to hear a performance by hip-hop artist Nelly, famous for his lyrics “I need you to get up up on the dance floor / Give that man what he’s asking for.” However, no strong, vocal opposition arose to Nelly’s performance, and the concert was widely attended.

ADD EVENT: YARDFEST, 12-3 P.M.

The question remains whether this excitement can be replicated at Harvard. Haan casts doubts about this possibility, suggesting that students at the College are independently minded and not accustomed to finding common ground in a social context.

"Harvard students are an incredibly diverse and highly motivated set of individuals,” Haan says. “It is possible that these very attributes that make Harvard such a great place also present a unique challenge to creating a single event that will appeal to everyone or foster a sense of community more broadly. All this means is that the College has to work that much harder to support it.”

Meanwhile, Spring Fling not only draws a large audience from its own community, but attracts members of others. Though his senior thesis in electrical engineering is due the following Monday, Hilton H. Augustine ’13 is determined to travel to Philadelphia for Penn’s Spring Fling, which he has attended since his freshman year at Harvard. Augustine smiles as he raves about the “awesome” event. He sees the culture surrounding Fling as completely different than that around Yardfest at Harvard. “It’s much more of an entire campus thing and an attitude,” he says. “Essentially from Thursday night on everyone is drinking.”

“It’s hard to create the entire culture around [Yardfest], especially since the way we’ve always had Yardfest has been like one Sunday afternoon, so you know you have school the next day,” he says. Perhaps as a possible solution to the problem of an immediately following school day, Yardfest falls on a Saturday this year. Regardless of the date of the event, Augustine thinks the prospects of Harvard students foregoing their schoolwork for more than one day are bleak. “[At Penn], everyone just knows no work is going to get done for the week, and people are okay with that. I don’t really see Harvard changing their attitude towards giving up a week of school.”

Acevedo agrees that a one-day event is the limit for Harvard students.

“I think one day is Harvard’s limit of excess, and I’m okay with that. Harvard-Yale is one day and everyone is fully committed and you go all in. By the time 6 p.m. comes you’re like, ‘I’m tired,’ and that’s fine. And I think the same goes for [Yardfest]. I think a full weekend is a bit excessive,” Acevedo says. But why exactly is one day the upper limit to Harvard students’ enjoyment of free time? Perhaps Harvard students prevent themselves from having a good time by building up the perception that they don’t have time for fun, or that fun needs to be scheduled into their Google calendars.

However, Parreno believes that Harvard students are capable of changing their perspectives toward college-wide events. “I think sometimes when our students are evaluating events, not just Yardfest, they look at what is missing rather than focusing on the good that is already there,” he says. “There is definitely a time and need to reflect on how an event can be improved, and our office and student leaders certainly do that, but there is also something to be said about being able to sit back and let yourself enjoy an event—especially one that is meant to bring our campus together.”