MOORHEAD — Cornstock 2024 has already begun its countdown thanks to an Instagram post made by the Campus Events Commission (CEC), stating that Cornstock will take place on April 20.
While specific details are still being kept on the down low, an in-depth look at the nuts and bolts behind the event provided a look at what it takes to prepare Cornstock.
Cornstock is an anual event held on campus dating back to April 1989. The event usually takes place in the last half of the spring semester, providing students with a campus concert before finals.
Like many other student-oriented events at Concordia, CEC plays a major role in planning and hosting Cornstock.
“They play a very integral role in the process of bringing it to life on campus,” said Kathryn Erickson, Concordia’s student organizations and programming coordinator and CEC’s advisor.
Erickson works closely with all of the commissioners to make sure they feel supported and set up well to make sure they can do their job. She also helps make sure events are going smoothly, aiming to provide general support to students involved.
“A lot of learning happens through event planning,” Erickson said.
As the advisor of CEC, Erickson also tries to coach the members of the group, encouraging them to reflect and learn from how events go. She believes that the information they learn can be used in new events to make them even better.
“There’s just a lot of moving pieces,” Erickson said.
The club’s members pick out musical artists they enjoy and discuss, sending their final choice to the commissioners. From there, the commissioners figure out the logistical side of things like timing and costs of the event.
The day of Cornstock, members help set up the space, including setting up green rooms and conducting sound checks. Members help sell tickets and merchandise, as well as trying to help with anything the artists need.
To raise awareness for the event, committee members also get people excited by putting out flyers, making posts on social media and keeping people up to date on important information.
The post on the club’s Instagram page was the start to this year’s Cornstock hype startup. Their post called for students to “clear their calendars” for the upcoming event and that more info was to come in the upcoming months.
Austin Fellman, a member of CEC’s Special Events Committee, stated that from a marketing aspect, the post is a good way to deliver the date of the event to students. Especially because so many students use Instagram and can see CEC’s posts.
“Instagram is a platform that a lot of people have these days so it’s easily accessible for people to view things,” Fellman said. He stated that this would aid them in making the event’s attendance greater.
“You say Cornstock and people are going to know, like ‘oh this is a big event!’” Fellman said.
Since CEC is responsible for planning the event, hype has remained prevalent among the group according to Erickson. The topic of Cornstock is long lasting when making events for the year, and there’s a lot of discussion about it.
“There’s always early buzz,” Erickson said.
Tennor Matzke, a committee member in CEC’s service wing, is in his second year in the crew.
“Some of my friends know I’m in CEC, and so they ask me about it all the time,” Matzke said.
While there isn’t a whole lot of talk about Cornstock among students that aren’t involved in CEC in the first semester, hype becomes a lot more prevalent in the second semester because Cornstock is closer, Matzke said.
“It’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be a really good time. Hopefully a lot more people will be able to attend,” Matzke said.
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