3OH!3 found fame in the early 2000’s with their Billboard Hot 100 hit, “Don’t Trust Me”.
3OH!3/COURTESY
Grace Cardinal, Editor-in-Chief
Springfest is returning to Manhattan University once again on April 5 featuring hip-hop duo 30H!3. The event will be the first time since 2023 that MU has hosted a headlining artist for the day.
30H!3 is an American hip hop duo from Boulder, Colorado. They are best known for their single “Don’t Trust Me”, which reached number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 upon its release in 2008, according to the band’s official Google overview.
“They are a hip hop duo, and nobody knows [them] when you hear their name, but when you hear their songs, you’re like, ‘Oh, I do know who this is,’” Audrey Daniels, vice president of Academic Affairs told The Quadrangle.
Springfest is planned and hosted each year by MU’s Student Government Association (SGA). Due to budget constraints last year, Springfest was reduced to only the carnival on the quad.
“Last year, Springfest was not Springfest,” Student Body President Jazi Riley said. “It was a carnival, and that’s okay. We can call it what it is. This year, we wanted nothing more but to have an artist at bare minimum, even if that meant we forfeit everything else, and that is because we want to put experience first.”
Riley is excited for the opportunity for underclassmen to experience what has previously been recognized as one of MU’s most notable spring semester traditions.
“There’s now freshmen and sophomores, there’s two classes on campus who are lacking on a tradition, and [who] don’t understand the scope of the tradition,” Riley said. “It [Springfest] brings the community together. It’s one of those big social events that just brings us all together.”
Nicole Brosnan, the associate director of orientation and Student Engagement, agreed with Riley’s sentiment and is passionate about returning Springfest to the student experience it once was.
“We want to bring Springfest back to what it was,” Brosnan told The Quadrangle. “We’re really excited about the concert, but we have other exciting things throughout the day. We want to bring the carnival back to the quad, just the campus full of life.”
Martina Eichhorn, the vice president of Social Life, made sure to put time into researching what students have enjoyed in the past in order to make this year’s Springfest one for the books.
“For me, I was reading through other things that happened in previous Springfests and what a lot of people loved to see and wanted to see again, and also hearing from our students,” Eichhorn said. “I read previous articles, and I just tried to see what grabbed the most attention. My planning obviously comes in with the extra stuff that we’re going to do, the carnival theme part of it, having the different areas with the different activities that we’re going to do.”
While budget was a factor in the decision to hire 30H!3 as this year’s artist, SGA’s main concern was who would bring the best vibes and experience for the students.
“When it came to planning Springfest, the artists we chose was one, [because of] budget,” Riley said. “Who notable can we get on campus with that? And so we were like, okay, who can we bring on that is fun, that’ll bring a nostalgic vibe, and this is what we settled on from the list we were given of artists within our budget. So I think we’re taking that nostalgia and running with it, and that’s gone into our carnival planning, like, how would you feel as a little kid, playing and having fun and then going and listening to this music that we probably listened to throughout middle school and high school.”
Daniels believes that this year’s Springfest will not only be a great way to celebrate the end of the academic year, but the resilience of MU and its students after a year of turmoil.
“I think that students are going to be pleasantly surprised by what we have planned,” Daniels said. “I think it’ll be fun…I think in contrast to last year, obviously it was kind of a bust unfortunately. I think it’s going to speak a lot to the fact that we’ve had a rough few years, but we’re still here. We know how to have fun and care about our students and what they want to see.”
As for what students can expect to experience, Riley promises a return to normalcy.
“You’re going to get the normal Manhattan University feel,” Riley said. “When big events don’t happen how they’ve traditionally happened, we feel it… it’s one of those things that you do because you’re a student on this campus…you do it because it’s so much fun, it’s mindless fun, it’s escapism at its peak, and it’s what makes our college feel so normal.”