The sixth annual Green Key weekend is just around the corner. This year, the traditional Friday night concert on Gold Coast Lawn will feature headliner Tinashe, as well as Quinn XCII and Coast Modern.
“It’s going to be a show … It’s going to be just nonstop fun,” Programing Board concert director Mary Clare Seeman ’18 said.
Performances on the Collis Center porch throughout the weekend will include a variety of more “indie” artists, including the Skins, according to Collis Governing Board chair Michelle Wang ’19. Various Collis Center student life organizations will also sponsor arts and crafts events and free food during the weekend.
The process for choosing Green Key artists for the main Gold Coast concert began when Programming Board contacted an outside agency with the budget and style of the artist they hoped for, according to Seeman. She said that Programming Board then brought various options to open campus meetings for feedback.
Seeman said people voiced hopes for someone “current,” “relevant” and “up and coming.”
Programming Board executive director Jane Gerstner ’18 said that having a female headliner, the first in Dartmouth’s Green Key history, was not “intentional or political,” but that instead “it is a part of the nature of the exec[utive] board having more women on it and … [is] a very positive thing.”
According to Seeman, Quinn XCII was the first artist Programming Board secured for the Green Key concert, as he had been in the running for Fallapalooza, but had a scheduling conflict. Seeman said Coast Modern added another style to the mix of artists.
“We have Tinashe, we have Quinn [XCII] — two very different sounds — [and] we really wanted to round it out with a band,” Seeman said. “We want the concert to have something for everyone, and so we kind of wanted that indie, pop, rock band [feeling] and Coast Modern filled that spot perfectly.”
Similarly to last year, concert-goers will be required to wear special bracelets for admission into concert events. Hanover Police Chief Charlie Dennis said that these wristbands were implemented in 2017 as part of an effort to ensure the event remained closed to those outside the Dartmouth community, including local middle and high school students. Orange snow fence also enclosed the concert venue.
This year’s Green Key will also see water-filled jersey barriers placed across Tuck Drive. Dennis said these barriers are intended as a precautionary measure to protect against any vehicles that may attempt to run over concert-goers in the crowded venue.
Interim director of Safety and Security Keysi Montás said Hanover Police made these security decisions in collaboration with Safety and Security.
Both Dennis and Montás said they were pleased with the success of last year’s wristband and snow fence systems, and that they did not notice high school or middle school-aged students at the concert, in contrast to prior years.
Montás noted that it is important to keep Green Key a Dartmouth-only event, adding that alcohol overconsumption by non-community members “carries a lot of liability for the College and for the students organizing the event.”
Montás also said that any non-Dartmouth underage drinkers who over-consume alcohol must be sent directly to the hospital rather than to Dick’s House, which can stretch resources thin, sometimes requiring more than one ambulance running at once to keep everyone safe.
“[Wristbands and fencing] is one of the ways that we make sure we have an event that is by our community and for our community … and if things were to go south … then we have the resources to make sure we provide for our community in the best way we can,” Montás said.
Programming Board has worked to ensure that the security requirements inconvenience students as little as possible, implementing measures such as including instructions on the wristband envelope students receive in their Hinman boxes and adding preregistration for guests, according to both Gerstner and Seeman.
Dartmouth Emergency Medical Services, the Hanover Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services, Hanover Police and Safety and Security will all work together during the weekend to ensure that concert-goers remain safe, Montás said.
Gerstner said that the increase in safety requirements in recent years has also increased the Green Key budget.
Seeman said that students’ Green Key concert expectations increase each year.
“[Green Key] has definitely grown,” she said. “It becomes very much a part of institutional memory that every year there’s this big concert, so I think every year the expectations get larger.”
