The spring 2017 Saturday Ivies concert—scheduled for April 29—will be held indoors in William Farley Field House for the fourth year in a row, according to Bowdoin Entertainment Board (Eboard) co-chairs Arindam Jurakhan ’17 and Brendan Civale ’17. Whittier Field, the outdoor venue where the concert is typically scheduled, will be hosting the NESCAC Spring Track and Field Championships during Ivies weekend.
The Track and Field Championships rotate between NESCAC schools, with Bowdoin set to host in 2017. The dates are set because the meet feeds into NCAA regional and national championships, according to Ashmead White Director of Athletics Tim Ryan.
Student Activities considered other locations for the concert or changing the weekend of Ivies, according to Director of Student Activities Nate Hintze. However, Hintze said no other outdoor facility allows for the College to adequately regulate who comes and goes. Moving the dates of Ivies weekend was also infeasible, as the preceding weekend is the Admissions Open House for high school seniors, and the following weekend is too close to reading period.
Although students like the idea of an outdoor concert, Eboard members said that an indoor concert brings several advantages, especially given the advance notice.
“It actually makes it a lot easier for us, and a lot less expensive,” Jurakhan said. “Normally you have to plan for both an indoor and outdoor concert which costs a lot of money because we have to pay for a tent that goes along with it as well as the truck [and] pull down stage. But this year ... we [will] cut those costs immediately.”
In past years, the concert has been tentatively scheduled outdoors, with the field house as a backup option in the event of inclement weather. Last year, the concert was held indoors after neighbors of the College expressed concern about the lyrics of rapper Waka Flocka Flame. The concert was also held indoors the previous two years before that due to weather conditions.
Planning for an indoor concert also allows Eboard and Student Activities to consider performance and lighting effects.
“Because usually we give them less than 24 hours to pull sound and lights from outside to inside, now that we have a full year we can think about what are the other options that we can do for sound and lights,” Hintze said.
Civale was optimistic about the prospects of another concert in the field house.
“I’ve always had a great time in Farley,” he said. “I understand that maybe people who had an outdoors Ivies may be reminiscing about the fact that they had them, but now this whole student body has never had an outdoor Ivies.”
Some students did not share Civale’s enthusiasm.
“I think the shame about the indoor concert, especially last year because last year was actually really good weather but was moved in … [is that] it’s hard because Ivies is supposed to be a celebration of the spring and of the weather,” said Caroline Montag ’17.
Danny Mejia ’17 expressed his dissatisfaction with the field house as a concert location.
“It’s a place that people go to sweat and work out and compete against one another and it’s just uncomfortable,” he said.
With the announcement, current seniors will never experience an outdoor Ivies concert.
“You hear so many stories when you’re a first-semester freshman about what Ivies is like,” Mejia said. “All of my stories were from people who had gone to an outdoor concert, and they said that it being outside was just so much more about being together.”
Civale and Jurakhan said the venue change will not affect how Eboard chooses the Ivies artist.
“We don’t really pick based off venue. We usually just pick who we think the best artist is concurrent with the survey we send out,” Jurakhan said.
In the event of inclement weather during Ivies weekend and the track and field championships, field events like pole vault might also need to take place indoors, but Ryan said Athletics has a contingency plan.
“We’ve thought about how we would make that work in terms of scheduling-wise, so we could have our events that may need to take place indoors completed in time so that concert would be able to start on time,” he said.