When people think of May at our university, the first thing that comes to their mind would be the university festival. However, unlike the past when students prepared the festival actively, these days’ university festivals are becoming more like a concert every year, and it is a shame.

If university students were asked to answer about the university festivals, one of the most common words would be celebrities. The original purpose of university festivals was to introduce and show various programs and activities like school clubs, departments’ small groups or even bigger groups like the departments themselves prepared for the festival. With those activities, students could relive their stress and form stronger relationships. However, since the late 1990s, status of celebrities among university students grew. Because of that, university students started to care more about who are coming to the festival than what they can do during festival. Now, university festival is all about drawing more and more famous celebrities. It is more like a 3 day concert of K-pop singers than an actual festival.

Chung-ang University is going to have a festival ‘Let’s United Chung-Ang UniversityS(LUCAUS)' from May 23th to 25th. Being part of last year’s festival planning group, the writer know that CAU’s festival puts more emphasis on the original purpose of the university festival. The members of planning group for LUCAUS try their hard to avoid LUCAUS turning into a 3 day concert. To do that, they placed the most people on a ‘Plaza team’ which deals with student’s booth activities during festival. The ‘Plaza team’ also has to come up with the programs or activities like a blind dates, and air slide, etc. to make sure that students enjoy the festival the most. Thankfully, last year’s LUCAUS kept the original purpose of university festival. However, it was sad to see CAU students comparing the quality of festival based on the celebrities who came. Also, many students gathered for celebrity shows but they all went home when HURRAH-C or school performing club like Da C side, and Blue Dragon performed. 

           As I said above, university festivals are about university students, not celebrities. The quality of festival shouldn’t be judged by who did or didn’t come. University festival should be created by students, for students. To do that, not only the planning team, but also the students who enjoy the festival, should remember the original purpose of university festival. 

저작권자 © 중앙헤럴드 무단전재 및 재배포 금지