COLUMN: An Aggie Fest for the rest of us
At the end of any given school year we have the opportunity to look back. Occasionally, one takes the opportunity to look ahead and see what can be done better for the upcoming school year. I personally want to be a better student. My desires are to better manage my time and money and get the most out of my college experience while still keeping my education the priority. This is a lofty goal, and it is one that I assume to be sharing with many of you.
These last two weeks will be marked with big events to celebrate a generally successful semester. Last week we witnessed not one, but two True Aggie nights, the annual blue and white spring football game, and a very successful Day on the Quad despite some wind and poor ping pong ball aiming by the sky divers. This week will favor us with a comedy show Wednesday, a movie on Old Main hill Thursday night and the main event of Aggie Fest on Friday. This main event will consist of the much anticipated – I assume – announcement of the new name for 700 North, followed by a performance by Sean Kingston, yet another somewhat recognizable name to grace our campus. On paper, this looks to be one of the better planned events of the year. Looking back, one of the events that worked the most was the initial street concert featuring The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. While most people ran off after they performed their singular hit “Face Down,” it was an enormous success as far as attendance and ease of mobility.
I mention this ease of mobility in contrast to the much-maligned HOWL – which somehow ranked second for achievement of the year at the Robins awards – as it was nearly impossible to enter the event, and the acoustics for the live bands rattled the brains of those that were lucky to get in. Naturally holding an outdoor concert in the street around Halloween time is impossible, but there are better options.
Of course there were other events that failed to gain traction with the student body and are generally viewed as failures. BJ Novak’s name will go down in the history of USU as a hiss and a byword, not because of the quality of his act, but rather due to the unfortunate nature of the poorly-attended, controversy-lined event. Having said this, though, I realize that both of these events are now in the past, never to be repeated. My hope is that we can learn from these mistakes, and that our elected and appointed officials with ASUSU will stand on the shoulders of their predecessors and gain from the perfect vision of retrospect.
It seems as though the organizers have learned a thing or two this year. Aggie Fest seems to be a reiteration of what worked over the course of the year with elements of things that didn’t work notably absent. Gone are the entry fees for a student-funded event. Gone are the crowded spaces of the TSC – although the change of seasons is mostly to thank for that. There is no better way to send out the year on a good note than a relative bounty of performers on Friday, and a classic street dance party to celebrate the pavement underneath that is now ours.
On the subject of retrospect, it must be noted that the film to be featured on Old Main hill is the 1985 Michael J. Fox classic “Back to the Future.” I will personally be feeling the large dose of deja vu, as this same film was featured at an identical event last year. Of the thousands of suitable movies at our disposal, why would ASUSU decide to screen the same movie two years in a row? Oh well, we can all enjoy the catch phrases of this classic film one more time.
As for the idea of our new ASUSU representatives standing on the shoulders of their predecessors, it seems that the new programming VP Zach Larsen is doing his best to move past the controversial year that was. Apparently, they have sent a survey out to students to see what kind of event they would like to see. I have yet to see it and haven’t heard of anybody who has, so maybe it should be a little more widely advertised, like in the school newspaper.
Here’s to hoping that things change for the better in the future. Let us support those who have been elected and appointed to represent us, but also hold them accountable when they disappoint. Let’s profit from this last week-and-a-half as a proper prelude to summer.
Tyler Barlow is a sophomore majoring in computer engineering. He can be reached at tyler.barlow@aggiemail.usu.edu.