Wittfest is a day that the student body looks forward to year after year. The house crawls, Wittfest headliner, food trucks and great time spent with friends all make Wittfest a day to remember. With that, this year’s Wittfest was not without fault or complications. The drama and controversy surrounding the revoked invitation from B.o.B had campus chatting up a storm. But, after the announcement of the new performer, Far East Movement, students seemed more optimistic, determined not to let anything ruin their Wittfest.
In years past, there has always been a day long house crawl that a large majority of campus partakes in. Several groups of students offer up their houses as stops for the crawl and a large group of Witt students wanders from house to house, singing, blaring music and dancing along the way.
But this year, the crawl was cancelled.
Over the past year, there have been several student injuries due to the lacking structural foundations of Witt houses. With that, as well as other non-house related factors, the crawl was cancelled before it even started. As a result, students spent a majority of the day wandering around looking for the next party only to spend half an hour there before it was shut down by Witt Police.
In this way, Wittfest parties and other daytime activities, weren’t as great as they have been in years past.
The Wittfest headliner, Far East Movement, also wasn’t as great as performers in years past. The group of three performers only sang a few songs during their performance. Instead, they simply DJ’d for a majority of their set, even though Union Board hired another artist specifically to DJ.
Several students complained about the unoriginality of the performers saying that they just played the same beats and drops over and over again and when they did decide to play something else, they just remixed previously released songs instead of playing some of their own.
“The stuff they’re playing is just loud bass and the same track repeated over and over again,” Carter Schmidt, ‘19, said.
Not all of this year’s Wittfest was a total bust. Union Board’s BBQ and Bluegrass festival was a hit. Complete with enough BBQ to feed an army and even a mechanical bull that had students holding on for dear life as tears from laughing so hard rolled down their faces.
The Paint U Rave immediately following Far East Movement’s performance was also a hit. Union Board members themselves got to stand on stage and shoot paint into the audience, of course making sure to get their friends.
Even though, according to Co-President Annie Carroll, ‘19, about half of the audience left after Far East Movement’s performance and didn’t stay for the Rave, those that did had a blast and were dripping in paint by the time they left the HPER.
