Thousands of students flocked to Harper Stadium on May 19 for the University of California Santa Barbara’s annual campus music festival, ‘Extravaganza.’
This year, the event included live performances from decorated artists including Peach Pit, an indie pop band from Canada, Lorely Rodriguez, better known as her stage name Empress Of, Deorro, a Mexican-American producer and DJ, and Aminé, who has recently reached number 11 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. Playboi Carti was the festival’s headliner.
Extravaganza took place over a period of seven hours, and despite subpar weather conditions including high winds and light rain, went on as planned. Each artist performed for approximately one hour, with large crowds forming during the Aminé and Playboi Carti sets.
Associated Students Program Board (AS), “a student-operated non-profit organization funded by lock-in fees which aims to coordinate fun and educational events for the UC Santa Barbara community,” organizes the event each year.
Since undergraduate student fees fund AS, only students with a valid UCSB student ID were able to attend Extravaganza. To bypass this rule, many non-UCSB students searched on Facebook for IDs to use to attend the event. In some cases, individuals were willing to pay upwards of $30 for entry.
Due to the costlier undergraduate fees that UCSB students pay as part of their tuition compared to other schools within the UC System, Isaac Ortiz, a third year student at UCSB, wasn’t surprised by the festival’s star-studded lineup.
“I heard that we pay the highest of all AS fees out of all the UCs, so I am not at all surprised that they were able to get such a good lineup,” Ortiz told The College Post.
While Extravaganza ran smoothly overall, the event encountered some complications that had to do with entry, including long wait times for attendees.
“I swear they had like two people scanning cards… and two people checking bags… How did they think that was enough,” one student commented on the UC Santa Barbara reddit page.
https://twitter.com/DeanRaymond12/status/1130688431929954304
William Arana, a third year student at UCSB, said despite the long wait times to get into the festival and between sets, the event was still enjoyable.
“It sucks that the line was so long, but I’m not really tripping,” Arana told The College Post. “I was more mad about the fact that Playboi Carti was about forty to fifty minutes late.”
Although a bulk of his day was spent waiting in line, Ortiz also said the performances students were treated to made attending Extravaganza worth it.
“I wish they would have had more people working at the event though, since so many people attended, the lines to get in were so long,” Ortiz said. “I was in line for about three hours and I missed multiple artists, but overall I still think it was a positive experience.”
As one of the last events that Associated Students had planned for the school year, Extravaganza gave students a chance to relax and close out the year on a positive note.