“You can only achieve the end of putting on an event that facilitates a sense of campus community if it is free for all College students,” Haan says.
AUDIO FEEDBACK
The goals of Yardfest planners closely match those of student organizers of similar events at Harvard’s peer institutions—bringing students together for an inclusive event to relax and cut loose. Factors beyond money may limit Harvard’s ability to achieve this goal.
“[Penn has] so many fraternities and sororities that they have a lot of outside space, social spaces that are not necessarily [overseen] by the University,” Acevedo remarks.
Those alternative social areas may have provided students at Penn with a variety of spring events to attend. Meanwhile, Harvard students are generally funneled into the Yard for a few hours to attend a concert; however, this is not necessarily detrimental to Yardfest itself. In 2011, when Yardfest coincided with Visitas—the visiting program for admitted students to the College—the concert drew a record number of attendees to the Yard for performers Far East Movement, Sam Adams, and White Panda.
“Pre-frosh weekend, I thought, was amazing and was actually a selling-point for me,” says Linda Zhang ’15, who attended Yardfest in 2011 as a senior in high school. “Not that I was going to turn down Harvard, but it was definitely something that drew me more to the school because you see the fun side. Harvard isn’t just a great school where people study and do great things with their lives, but it’s also a place where people can have fun.”
This experience gave Zhang the perception that Harvard had a vibrant party culture, where students could come together. “It wasn’t something that I quite expected. The concert was crazy and I was like ‘Ah! This must be what college is like everyday.’ So it was a little misleading in that sense.”
This year, student protest mounted when the CEB and Concert Commission announced the choice of rapper Tyga as the headliner for Yardfest. Students signed a petition urging administrators to cancel the performance, citing the artist’s lyrics as “explicitly and violently misogynistic.” Ultimately, the CEB and Concert Commission opted to delay Tyga’s start time but retain him as a performer. This situation has raised questions about what types of art Harvard should promote and what role Yardfest plays in this endorsement.
The choice of the rapper came from student-run committees, who solicited fellow students' opinions and views through a survey sent out in the fall in which the majority of undergraduates expressed interest in a Top 40 artist. By all means, Tyga is a popular artist who has produced chart-topping hits. However, many students expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the choice, and the OSL even asked the CEB to reconsider its decision to book the rapper.
An audience of 17,500 showed up at Cornell in 2011 to hear a performance by hip-hop artist Nelly, famous for his lyrics “I need you to get up up on the dance floor / Give that man what he’s asking for.” However, no strong, vocal opposition arose to Nelly’s performance, and the concert was widely attended.
ADD EVENT: YARDFEST, 12-3 P.M.
The question remains whether this excitement can be replicated at Harvard. Haan casts doubts about this possibility, suggesting that students at the College are independently minded and not accustomed to finding common ground in a social context.
"Harvard students are an incredibly diverse and highly motivated set of individuals,” Haan says. “It is possible that these very attributes that make Harvard such a great place also present a unique challenge to creating a single event that will appeal to everyone or foster a sense of community more broadly. All this means is that the College has to work that much harder to support it.”
Meanwhile, Spring Fling not only draws a large audience from its own community, but attracts members of others. Though his senior thesis in electrical engineering is due the following Monday, Hilton H. Augustine ’13 is determined to travel to Philadelphia for Penn’s Spring Fling, which he has attended since his freshman year at Harvard. Augustine smiles as he raves about the “awesome” event. He sees the culture surrounding Fling as completely different than that around Yardfest at Harvard. “It’s much more of an entire campus thing and an attitude,” he says. “Essentially from Thursday night on everyone is drinking.”
“It’s hard to create the entire culture around [Yardfest], especially since the way we’ve always had Yardfest has been like one Sunday afternoon, so you know you have school the next day,” he says. Perhaps as a possible solution to the problem of an immediately following school day, Yardfest falls on a Saturday this year. Regardless of the date of the event, Augustine thinks the prospects of Harvard students foregoing their schoolwork for more than one day are bleak. “[At Penn], everyone just knows no work is going to get done for the week, and people are okay with that. I don’t really see Harvard changing their attitude towards giving up a week of school.”
Acevedo agrees that a one-day event is the limit for Harvard students.
“I think one day is Harvard’s limit of excess, and I’m okay with that. Harvard-Yale is one day and everyone is fully committed and you go all in. By the time 6 p.m. comes you’re like, ‘I’m tired,’ and that’s fine. And I think the same goes for [Yardfest]. I think a full weekend is a bit excessive,” Acevedo says. But why exactly is one day the upper limit to Harvard students’ enjoyment of free time? Perhaps Harvard students prevent themselves from having a good time by building up the perception that they don’t have time for fun, or that fun needs to be scheduled into their Google calendars.
However, Parreno believes that Harvard students are capable of changing their perspectives toward college-wide events. “I think sometimes when our students are evaluating events, not just Yardfest, they look at what is missing rather than focusing on the good that is already there,” he says. “There is definitely a time and need to reflect on how an event can be improved, and our office and student leaders certainly do that, but there is also something to be said about being able to sit back and let yourself enjoy an event—especially one that is meant to bring our campus together.”