They credit Associate Deans of the College Judith H. Kidd and Paul J. McLoughlin, II with helping them navigate the intricacies of the planning process and with helping to build the institutional framework to make this into a tradition.
“From an economic and an administrative point of view it’s an event that students can’t do by themselves,” McCambridge says. “It’s not possible, there’s no way that we could deal with parking services, with insurance, with UHS, with HUPD, with the facilities maintenance operations, with transportation, with risk management and the general counsel’s office, with the press office. We have to go to school, too.”
THROUGH THE PAST, DARKLY
Students familiar with the current, family-friendly incarnation of Springfest may be surprised to learn that, in an earlier form, the Springfest menu included alcohol. At the two earliest Springfests and again in 1998, the council provided free beer to student revelers.
In 1998, though, Dean of Students Archie C. Epps, III became concerned that the event was becoming too alcohol-centered.
“We will not allow kegs and have asked the council to present the event in a way which does not feature alcohol because that just sends the wrong message,” Epps told The Crimson at the time.
He required the council to serve its beer in can form, in a small fenced in area, only during lunch. Students wishing to enter the drinking area were screened for age by a professional beverage authorization team. Each student would receive a maximum of two beers.
The battle over alcohol was only one of several conflicts faced by Springfest during its attempts to define itself. Would Springfest be a venue for tipsy students to party and traipse from booth to booth? Epps thought not, and 1998 was the last time beer was served at Springfest.
In 2001, Springfest changed again, this time decisively. Summers, fresh on the job and eager to connect with undergraduates, offered to co-sponsor Springfest with one catch: the event would have to be opened to Harvard faculty and staff along with their families.
Springfest had been struggling to hold the attention of the student body. As early as 1997, shortly after the fourth annual Springfest, The Crimson published an editorial urging the council to revamp the festivities.
“Be more creative,” the editorial said. “A Springfest highlighted by sno-cones, bouncy rides and Harvard Dining Services hamburgers just isn’t worth repeating year after year.”
It became increasingly clear that the council’s pockets were not deep enough to continue to improve Springfest. In 2002, UC President Sujean S. Lee ’03 estimated that the council would only be able to pay a band $5,000 to perform at Springfest. Summers’ offer of co-sponsorship turned out to be too good for the council to turn down.
Students still had misgivings about opening the event to the rest of the Harvard community. Would the presence of families at the event turn Springfest into the Harvard University company picnic?
“This isn’t an inherently bad idea,” wrote former Crimson managing editor Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan ’02 in a column. “But it means that the president and the council have fundamentally changed the nature of Springfest…With this shift, it’s not really a student-focused event any more. That might not be such a big deal, if someone had taken the trouble to really make clear what students stand to gain from Summers co-sponsoring the event in the first place.”
The gain for students turned out to be $20,000 of University money, effectively doubling the budget for the event. Springfest 2002 was widely regarded as a success, despite the unpopularity of the Verve Pipe with students, and created the model that remains more or less in place today.
Tonight’s concert may well be the first year that the promise implicit in Summers’s co-sponsorship comes to fulfillment. Busta is undoubtedly the most popular artist to perform on campus in recent memory. His decidedly non-family-friendly approach may well shift the tenor of Springfest back in the direction of students. Ten years after its start, Springfest may finally have figured things out.
—Staff writer Nathaniel A. Smith can be reached at nsmith@fas.harvard.edu.