Why was my experience so different?

The 57th Annual Elmhurst University Jazz Festival was the best it’s ever been, according to the hired staff in charge. From a student perspective, it was far from perfect but has great potential to be better. 

I worked the festival throughout most of the week it happened, Feb. 22-25, and frankly, my experience was very different from the experiences of student leaders. I felt as if I wasn’t trusted, like I needed to prove myself somehow before I would be trusted with anything I actually wanted to learn. 

Part of this is me having a big ego. I’ll admit it. I’m confident in my skills, whether that be in broadcast, live sound, or even stage management, all areas I ended up helping with throughout the event, but that doesn’t mean the people I was working with knew that about me. 

Sure, these are friends and peers I’ve worked with throughout the year, but I haven’t spent nearly as much time with the students running the festival as they have with each other. 

What was more interesting to me than just complaining about how little I got to do, was seeing how much others were involved and how they felt about it. I spoke with as many of the students and staff in charge of the fest as possible and what struck me as odd was how different all of their experiences were. 

The first person I spoke with was Claudia Rejowski, a Music Education major who managed the PR team for the festival. Rejowski’s operation was interesting because it was essentially just her. She had another photographer, Marii Baez, who helped on the days of the festival, but otherwise was essentially left to her own devices. 

Being essentially on her own, Rejowski said she felt separated from the rest of the student crew heads. 

“It would be nice to be kept in the loop,” Rejowski stated, talking quite a bit about how much planning and organization had been done on her end, and how it didn’t feel like others had done that. “Things were so unorganized, when things were communicated, they were communicated too late.” 

Relating to her Music Education focus, Rejowski noted she would have preferred to see more of the operations of the festival, even if she couldn’t participate in the decision making, to better prepare her for future life as an educator likely to be in a similar position to the festival planners. 

Rejowski’s opinion is unique in that the other student managers had almost no concerns about the level of communication or planning they received. 

Cassadie Comiskey, student crew head of livestreaming, felt very in control of her department. Livestream, however, unlike PR, had a hired help, alumni Nate Baxter. 

According to Comiskey, on the first day “it was 50/50” but “by the last two days, [livestream] was fully student ran.” She was managing a team of students who operated cameras, pushed overlays, and switched between video feeds in real time for paying livestream viewers. 

Comiskey did note a lack of communication too though. 

“[Other departments] didn’t really talk to me much about anything,” she said, admitting “I was in my own world” and “was very disconnected.” 

She spins this as a positive however, believing crew leads shouldn’t feel the need to be meddling with other departments’ work unless they have to. 

Dominic Bouffard, student head of sound, agrees. He admitted the majority of his job as student head of sound is “getting the volunteers.” 

Before taking over the sound department last year, Bouffard claimed, “I didn’t know the work that was involved” and “we can’t do it without the ‘adults’.” 

Throughout the festival, Bouffard worked closely with John Borne, the associate director of Innovative Solutions & Platforming at Shure, a global audio company. Borne, being an Elmhurst alumni, has been working at the festival for the better part of two decades now. 

Ultimately, Bouffard was happy to let Borne do as much work as he felt was necessary, from planning to live sound mixing. 

“This festival holds such respect in the Jazz realm.” Bouffard believes the festival is a stage where mess-ups should not be allowed, and if that means less student involvement then so be it. 

This isn’t to say Borne is taking away control from Bouffard, much the opposite in fact. When I spoke with him, Borne was very excited to find new ways to get students involved with the festival and get their hands on the mixing table. 

“Shadowing is really important,” Borne said, but he also recognizes that at a collegiate jazz fest, people should have the opportunity to actually participate on the big stage. 

“Nobody is going to care… People don’t talk to me about sound, they’re not going to care.” Borne stated. 

When asked about his experience working the festival, Borne explained that he has been working in the space for so long and has refined the necessary equipment and setup so much that he claims, “I almost don’t need a mic check.” 

His statement isn’t just frivolous bragging though; it goes in tandem with his statement about supposedly nobody caring. Because the setup for the festival is so streamlined, it’s almost impossible for a student goofing off with the console to screw up and get people mad at them. 

Plus, Borne claims, “It’s a student festival. Things’ll happen.” 

The idea of the festival being too legendary to screw up stayed an underlying theme of Borne and I’s discussion too though. Part of the reason he’s the one planning exactly what equipment to rent, and where and when to load it in, is to create a minimum standard of quality. 

Chris Parsons, festival director, generally agrees with this. He claims “this is an entirely student-run festival in many capacities.” 

Every staff member I spoke with said some variation of this, that the festival was totally student-run, except for the parts where it wasn’t. 

I just couldn’t understand it. Parsons claimed, “there’s endless opportunities for involvement,” but then turned around and said there were countless aspects of the festival he couldn’t share with any of the student leads, particularly surrounding money and contracting. 

Mechanically, I understand why it is this way, but I just can’t wrap my head around why there isn’t more done. 

“You never want to step on the eagerness of students willing to learn” claimsParsons, but just a few sentences later he says, “there’s an expectation of how it’s supposed to sound.” It all comes back to a variation of that phrase. 

What stuck with me from my conversation with Parsons the most was the phrase “it can be frustrating to think you’re ready.” Because yes, it is! It was very frustrating to see parts of what was going on but not understand the greater meaning and not have it explained to me either. 

A lot of this was because I was learning on the job. I wasn’t at the meetings during J-Term or fall semester where details were laid out, just the festival itself. Technically, I don’t need to know any of this, but I wanted to. 

In the end, that’s what it boils down to. My Jazz Fest experience was one I wasn’t happy with. Instead of just being upset about it, I went out of my way to interview almost every student and staff leader and write an article about how I was upset about it. 

At least with an article, I can make a big sweeping generalization about how Jazz Fest leadership should be more proactive in reaching out to students or should hand over more control to the crew leads who want it. The crew leads should be more engaged in the process, and they should stand up for themselves and try to be more active in the planning process. 

I don’t need to say it though. They already know that. All anyone needs to do is actually take initiative.