It’s safe to say that Springfest is one of the most anticipated days on the Brandeis campus. It’s one of the few days of the year that Brandeis students are willing to go all out: from the fashion to the parties to the general positive vibes. But what goes on behind the scenes of Springfest? This is one of the most attended events on campus, but very few know how it all came together. Sidonia Ohringer ’22, the concerts chair of the Campus Activities Board (CAB), explained the planning process of this music festival event.
“I started looking for a committee for Springfest in September, and we had our first meeting in October,” said Ohringer in an interview with The Brandeis Hoot. Ohringer explained that CAB picks the headlining artist first, and then builds the rest of the show around them. As each artist has a different performance fee, the cost of the headliner will affect the amount and type of openers CAB can afford. But, they look into more than just budgets in their selection process.
“We spent a lot of weeks thinking about who will represent the student body the best,” said Ohringer. “We wanted to do something for the girls, gays and theys!” This year’s Springfest was on Sunday, May 1. Flo Milli headlined. Slayyyter, Kash Doll and Young M.A opened for her.
Though these artists provide a wide variety of styles and sounds, not everyone at Brandeis was happy. The announcement post for Kash Doll has over 200 comments. The original mean comments were taken down, instead leaving the slews of Brandeisians defending the quality of these artists. Ohringer confided that CAB did receive some nasty feedback from students, but that the positive feedback was greater than the negative. “Despite all those comments, we got support from the majority of students, because we’re doing this [festival] for the majority of the students.”
The show itself went relatively smoothly, but had a few hitches along the way.
Ohringer said that her day started at 6 a.m. when she had to start gathering the rest of CAB board for setup. Her day-of activities included setting up dressing rooms, keeping artists happy and making sure everything was running smoothly. Perhaps the most noticeable issue was that the Springfest schedule was running about half an hour late. The cause of the delay? Kash Doll had to change her shoes, Ohringer revealed.
But, this seems to be standard practice for an event this large. “Our hard cut-off time is 7:30,” said Ohringer. “We know that there are always going to be little issues during the actual event.”
One thing Ohringer wishes that people knew about the planning of Springfest is that CAB themselves has limitations on what they can provide for the show, in terms of “food, artists and availability.” Ohringer explained that this show is planned by students, who are also busy with classes. They also have a very strict budget from Brandeis, which restricts the artists that they can get to campus. Requested people like Doja Cat are too expensive to get, she said.
As concert chair, Ohringer is leading the team who put Springfest together, but she did not work alone. She credited a lot of the work to her fellow CAB members. Also working the event were Valeria Ayala ’25, Raven Sead ’24, Abigail Winter ’22, Douglas Vantran ’22, Emma Knego ’22, Markia Neufville ’22, Amanda Lui ’23, Zoe Pearce ’22, Steph Orlic ’22, Madeline Toombs ’23, Aaron Kelly ’24, Rebecah Kennedy ’22 and Ian Gachunga ’24.
“It’s a team effort. Everybody works together in order to make Springfest amazing,” said Ohringer.
