On Friday, May 18th, UC San Diego hosted their annual Sun God Festival. Notorious for bringing to the school musical guests of at least some notability and overall a day of debauchery and letting loose between midterms and finals, the festival attracts both students of UCSD as well as college students from all over.
For those of you who don’t know about Sun God, here’s a brief history. In 1983, the Sun God statue for which the festival was named arrived on campus. The first Sun God festival coincided to the one year anniversary of the statue being on campus. Since then, the festival has changed venues from the small field directly adjacent to the statue in steps to the RIMAC Field to accommodate the growing popularity of the festival.
This year’s Sun God day was a rather overcast one that differed from the sunny ones that preceded it but as I arrived on campus, the plentiful amount of festival related signs and street closures made it clear that something big was going on. Upon entry to the festival, a large stage with an equally large crowd of people congregated before a rapper. On the far end of the field was another large stage with another large crowd; this was the electronic dance music stage. Scattered between the two was an inflatable wrecking ball, an inflatable obstacle course with a giant inflatable slide that served as the source of a pretty gnarly scab on my right elbow. Also set up was a tent in which various UCSD student groups performed, as well as our very own Kaba Modern. Part of the appeal of Sun God is the fact that the lineup is generally guaranteed to be good. Musical genres range from rap to rock to hip hop and almost everything in between. Artists from previous years include Wiz Khalifa and Michelle Branch. The main draws of this year’s lineup were the Silversun Pickups and DJ Paul Van Dyk, closing off the ten hour festival playing on stages opposite each other on the expansive field on which the festival was held.
And while UCSD isn’t known for its school spirit in the way some of the other UC’s are, it was a pretty incredible sight to see a field full of students, in addition to the packs roaming about campus because of Sun God, band together on just one day of the year to celebrate a tradition so great. Though UCI definitely has some beloved traditions and concerts scattered throughout the year, none of it really compares to the swell of involvement and interest of Sun God, leading me to wonder how our own lacking school spirit would fare with the addition of something like Sun God on our campus. Something to give us a reason to invite friends to visit, a point of pride that we too can show off about our amazing school. Something to awaken the Anteater pride I know resides in all of us.
Photo Credit: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/slideshowpage/sun_god_festival_2012/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SunGod2012Logo.png