By Colin Young, News Staff
When the Council for University Programs (CUP) announced Wiz Khalifa, Third Eye Blind, Taking Back Sunday and Mac Miller as the Springfest performers March 17, student opinion was varied. CUP Large Concert Chair Caitlyn Margulis said student feedback played a large role in CUP’s decision to book the acts, which span multiple genres and musical eras.
In the fall, CUP made a Springfest survey available on myNEU and asked them to indicate which artists they were interested in seeing come to campus, Margulis said.
“We really had good luck this year with the survey,” Margulis said. “It was one of the highest rated surveys taken and we had really, really great feedback. It just so happened that a good majority of the artists that people were voting for were artists that we were potentially looking into to begin with.”
Although student input is regarded highly by CUP, Margulis said other logistics have to be considered before signing an artist.
“It always depends on timing and availability, because all the artists that we look into for Springfest are obviously artists that appeal to a lot of people but at the same time they’re also very popular,” Margulis said.
When Springfest concert tickets went on sale March 22, Margulis said 4,200 of the 5,000 available tickets were sold despite technical issues with the ticketing system.
“The ticketing situation has to do with the ticketing system that Northeastern uses on the portal,” Margulis said. “The ticketing system didn’t prepare for the amount of students that were logged onto the system at the time being. It didn’t crash but it did slow things down. That being said, it was little bit of a snafu but tickets did sell.”
Margulis also said bringing Wiz Khalifa to campus was part of a CUP effort to attract an extremely popular artist for this year’s concert.
“Wiz Khalifa is a hot artist right now and when we were making our decision he was all over the Billboard Top 100,” Margulis said. “He was popular at the time we were looking at him and it seemed like he was going to be even bigger by the time we had him come to Matthews.”
While deciding on a Springfest act, CUP had to consider a recent arrest on Khalifa’s record. Khalifa was arrested on three drug charges after police smelled marijuana coming from his dressing room after a Nov. 8 performance at East Carolina University. Margulis said CUP took his arrest into consideration, but the group isn’t concerned.
“It has been addressed and it is known but that was a few months ago and Wiz has definitely gotten bigger and has taken a different attitude toward everything, seeing as his popularity has skyrocketed,” Margulis said. “It is an issue but it is not something that we or the school are concerned about for the show.”
