St. Joe’s long-running Spring Concert will not be happening in 2023, even though students have been anticipating the possibility of it occurring again.
The annual Spring Concert was canceled for the first time in 24 years in Feb. 2020. On April 7, 2022, Flo Rida performed in Hagan Arena, raising hopes for the revival of the annual Spring Concert. Beth Hagovsky, Ed.D., director of Student Leadership and Activities, said the 2022 concert was not meant to provide the notion of yearly Spring Concerts again.
“Last year, the event was actually called ‘an evening with Flo Rida’ because we didn’t want to create the impression that the Spring Concert was back to being an annual event,” Hagovsky said in response to written questions from The Hawk.
Hawk Hill Productions (HHP) had brought Flo-Rida to St. Joe’s, which was independent of planning Spring Concerts in the past, according to Erin Groves ’24, president of HHP. There had been a Spring Concert committee before the covid-19 pandemic, but lack of interest prevented the tradition from continuing.
“After a lot of assessment and review of previous concerts, the determination was made to cancel [the Spring Concert] due to declining attendance and an increase in spending of concerts,” Groves said.
Milton O’Brien ’25, member of the University Student Senate, said Student Senate is not directly involved with planning the Spring Concert.
“The Student Senate is currently planning on having a spring event. We’re developing the details and seeing what we can do,” O’Brien said.
Hagovsky said the intention of having a concert in 2022 was to gather students for an event that everyone could enjoy after the physical distancing restrictions during the pandemic.
“We did the concert last year because it had been awhile since we could do anything that large and indoors for students,” Hagovsky wrote. “So we wanted to bring the community together for a really special event that students would enjoy, and it worked!”
O’Brien said he recommends organizations on campus collaborate to host larger events for students.
“One organization can bring games or another organization can spend some of their money to bring different budgets together, to create a kind of higher-level event where students can enjoy different perspectives,” O’Brien said. “I think the students would really like to see the whole community coming together instead of just having one organization use a small percentage of their budget towards just one event.”
Although there are no plans for a Spring Concert this year, Groves said HHP is still planning other events for students in the future.
“We are exploring some smaller alternative options and are trying our best to bring a show to campus,” Groves said.
