Hey, Flower-Crown Festivalgoers (Readers).

As many of you know, I'm an accredited photographer/videographer for the University of Southern California Concerts Committee, the dope organization that stays up into the wee hours putting in lots of work to put on a ton of amazing festivals, concerts, and artist features for the USC student body throughout the semester. This includes Conquest, which is a big festival before the USC vs. UCLA football game (#FUCLA #FTFO), Noontime Show (a farmer's market concert + yoga flow), and Springfest.

As many of you who do not go to USC may not know, this past Saturday (April 1st... LOL April Fools' Day.... 😅) was Concert Committee's annual Springfest, which occurs right after midterms are over! #Celebration! 🎉 It's almost like a mini Coachella, where the students and their guests (more on the guests later.. 😡) can have a true SoCal festival experience, complete with a yoga flow, afternoon dance party, food trucks, vendors, creative art displays (which were hand-painted by Mureality, a super fun art + social impact club with which I am involved!), a lounge setup with cool lights typical of any awesome festival 😎), and, most importantly a lit lineup.

Many students joked about this year's lineup being, in fact, an April Fools' Day joke- that's how epic it was. It included many well known artists, such as Taylorwise, courtship., XYLO, Vanic, Big Gigantic (who are set to play Coachella next weekend- can't wait to be in attendance!), and more, and featured headliners Migos and Rae Sremmurd with special guest Travis Scott. Us Concert Committee members spent the semester brainstorming which artists we would like to include in the festival, and, through many complex negotiations, contracts, and meetings, we ((expensively)) achieved our headliner #goals. We were, in fact, making USC history- we had achieved the most expensive and highly celebrated artists ever. 😱 😍

Those who were kidding around about the Miiiiiiiigs and Rae Bae not actually performing at USC were right in a way... It was a BIG April Fools' Day joke 😩

Neither of the headliners got to perform due to security issues-- apparently, those attendees who patiently waited all day for the two HUGE headliners, or even those who do so toward the back for a decent amount of time, including my friends and me, were waiting to no avail. Campus security tried to quell the riots at the front of the crowd, which started with pushing and shoving, evidently escalating into serious medical emergencies and people passing out/getting trampled. 😲

Eventually, the police had to bring in a fire marshal, who attempted to get the crowd to calm down, but the students and their guests were just too crazy and violent. After about an hour of the authority attempting to end the fighting within the front mosh pit, he shut down the entire concert. Literally, Migos attempted to start singing "Culture" and then "Get Right Witcha" with Travis Scott, but was interrupted, quickly silenced, and forced to leave the stage. What. The. @!$#! Come on people, let's be civil! Why did the students and their guests have to fight each other to the extent where none of us could enjoy the much-anticipated headliners? 😔

Earlier in the day, I was in the media pit as the accredited photographer for the artists prior to the headliners, and I did not witness any aggression until Vanic and Big Gigantic- the two artists who played before Migos + Rae were supposed to perform- came out (at any concert, a fair amount of aggression among the hardcore fans waiting at the barricades is expected). When I went into the crowd to get some mosh shots, students and their guests were grabbing- no, clawing- at my camera, hair, body, and god knows what. People these days are apparently savage. 😭

Now, to get to the aspect of the "guests" to which I was referring earlier- if Springfest wasn't so overcrowded and filled with essentially anyone who the students wanted to bring to the event, maybe all of this fiasco wouldn't have gone down late Saturday night. Who knows who these guests are, and what sort of sentiments they have toward our student body? I'm not saying we should stop letting guests in or something, rather, that perhaps, in the future, USC festivals/concerts need tighter security/less guests admitted. The crowd definitely should have been capped at a certain number, but, clearly, that didn't happen. 😦

Alternatively, there could've been more security/policemen, or, if the Security subcommittee of the Committee really didn't want to make a crowd capacity for some reason, the festival could've been held at a larger venue that could accommodate this many people. I'm not on the Security Squad, I'm on the Media Squad, so I cannot ascertain what went on with security/medical safety, but I'm sure that the members of that subcommittee worked their hardest to make sure everything was running as smoothly as they could make it.

As Hannah Montana says, everyone makes mistakes. I hope that next year Springfest is still able to occur with comparably large- or even larger- headliners who will be able to perform for real and that this flop does not diminish Concert Committee's chances at having these big artists. We truly worked our hardest to bring the students the best experience possible, and we- and I can say this with 100% certainty- hope that everyone had a great rest of the Springfest experience. I also hope my peers appreciate all the time and dedication we put into throwing this gigantic event, and that they realize how much we all wanted to see these headliners.

I think that the number of people in attendance got out of control, and that we provided adequate security for a smaller number of attendees- or, at least, the large number of attendees, just less aggressive ones. In my opinion, we at Concerts Committee put way too much effort into making this the best Springfest yet, for all of our hard work to go to "waste" at the end of a very fun, before that point, day. It would have been great to have shot great photos and footage of Migos and Rae and even just to listen to them after all the work we put in, but we were, unfortunately, not allowed that enjoyment.

In conclusion, I had a spectacular day. I got to flow with famous yogi Andrew Sealy, participate in a huge dance party, jam it out to great music, shoot photos/videos with my Canon 5D Mark III for artists I love, interact with the talent, hang out with my friends, and even get featured on the Boohoo USA Instagram story as the flower crown-adorned queen I am. 💁🏻 I am disappointed in the crowd's behavior, and in how a few cray crays ruined the night portion of the festival to which we were all so looking forward.

As a member of the USC Concerts Committee, I feel like we should do a clapback concert @ everyone to show them what the results of our extremely hard work would have been if the crowd didn't go all "cash me ousside" on each other! Invite the headliners back to slay our campus again next weekend?! 😅 I wishhhh! Here's to future successful festivals at USC, and to continuing to photograph/film incredibly talented artists through the well-respected and widely loved institution of the USC Concerts Committee! Long live LIFE-CHANGINGLY GOOD CONCERTS!

XO,

ARW

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