By Jake Sauberman, deputy sports editor
Each year, Northeastern University students expect superstars to headline a concert at the end of Springfest Week, a grand culmination of the week celebrating the arrival of spring with a slew of activities. But none of it would come to fruition without the labors of the Council for University Programs’ (CUP) executive board and its team of volunteers.
This year’s Springfest Concert, which featured co-headliners Kesha and the Creepies and Rae Sremmurd, took place Saturday, April 8 at 7 p.m., but the preparation for turning Matthews Arena into a concert venue started more than 24 hours earlier and continued practically non-stop until doors opened.
“We have our first load-in shift on Friday from 3 p.m. to around 9,” said CUP President and Head of Marketing Sara Scott, a third-year business administration major. “That’s getting in a lot of the equipment we use and hauling things from trucks and building the stage.”
The work continued into the day of the show, with some volunteers walking into Matthews Arena as the sun was rising and not leaving until it was firmly set.
“On Saturday, we have volunteers there from 6:30 in the morning to around 11:30 p.m.,” Scott said. “So similarly, we have different shifts going on, like load-in, setup and runners for the show. We have CUP general members who are volunteers, and our [executive board] is there all day, so it’s quite a long time.”
The show’s co-headliners and opening act Atlas Genius were all selected and booked months in advance of the show.
“In the fall, we put out a Springfest Concert survey on myNEU,” Scott said. “We work to put out a list that’s hopefully pretty comprehensive and tries to cover all the genres and different sizes of artists and bands.”
The task of choosing the appropriate acts to match both what the students want to see on the stage and what is realistically feasible is up to Scott and other board members.
“From there, we work with a middle manager, Pretty Polly Productions, to look into artists and get price quotes,” Scott said. “That really narrows down the list, and then we start the booking process.”
Scott declined to disclose the production cost of the concert or specifics about each stage setup, but the transition between Kesha’s stage packed with musical equipment to Rae Sremmurd’s largely empty stage centered around a massive DJ stand showed the diversity of setups that CUP had to deal with.
The conversion of the stage and the majority of the physical work is done by the volunteers, whose essential contributions to the process made it enjoyable, Scott said.
“The best part of the week is working with all the general members in CUP,” she said. “We can’t do any of our events without our members because they help with setting up everything.”
As an open club, CUP welcomes new recruits at any point throughout the semester. And as the head of marketing, Scott plays a key role in advertising the club, employing a number of different strategies to allure potential prospects.
“We start [recruitment] in the beginning of the year at summer orientations at the club fairs,” Scott said. “Fall Fest is a big recruitment event for us too, just being able to tell people about what CUP does and about our meetings. We have posters, we create [Facebook] events; we’re constantly trying to recruit new members throughout the semester.”
Fast forward to the night of the concert, and Scott and the rest of the CUP members watched proudly as the labors of several months shook Matthews Arena with a trio of acts.
“It’s pretty incredible being able to be there in Matthews before anything or anyone is there,” Scott said. “You’re just standing there wondering how this is going to become a venue for a huge concert that so many people at Northeastern are attending. It feels so rewarding to be able to see everyone there at the concert and to see people enjoying the show and having a good time.”
