Flo Rida concert: an opportunity for students or a marketing scheme? 

The anticipation leading up to the announcement of who would headline the High Point University fall concert was huge. 

 

As the clock neared 12:30 p.m. on August 25, students packed in on the bottom floor of Slane, filling whatever space they could find between club tables of the involvement fair. Excited chatter danced in the air of the basketball court as the seconds and minutes ticked away until it was time for the grand reveal.

 

As the first notes of Flo Rida’s “Low” filled the student center, they quickly faded away to the shouts and cheers of students. 

 

“For us, this was our first time doing a big arena show on campus,” said Ryan Polidoro, President of the Campus Activities Team. “We didn’t expect to sell out tickets in 52 minutes.” 

 

And that unpreparedness continued all the way through the concert. 

 

When I got to the tailgate outside of the Nido and Mariana Qubein Arena, it was organized and well thought out. There was a line to receive wristband tickets, along with a gated area with food trucks, tables and photo ops. My group received floor passes, and we were ecstatic.

 

Once we moved to the doors to enter the arena, that's when things took a turn for the worse. 

 

Any semblance of a line was destroyed when the gated area was opened. Students rushed to the entrance, and a mob formed at the doors. I was pushed so close against other people that I couldn’t even raise my arms to use my phone. I could feel the hot air on my neck from the breaths of the people behind me.

 

“If you dropped anything, you probably weren't going to be able to pick it up,” said Casey Derrenbacher, an HPU student at the concert. “Everyone was touching…you could not move without bumping into another person.”

 

My friends and I moved a total of 30 feet in about 90 minutes. We stayed calm and together, but not everyone else could. 

 

“Two different sets of girls broke out into fights standing in that mob,” said Derrenbacher. “The first set was some girls in a group wanting to leave because of how hot and sweaty standing shoulder-to-shoulder was getting. The other was between two groups who accused one of pushing the other to get closer to the door when they had nowhere to go. When we finally got up to the doors, they were letting in one person at a time. But there wasn’t even an attempt at corralling the swarm of people into any sort of a line.”

 

Security was quickly aware of the growing situation just at the doors of the arena. 

 

“University officials told us, ‘Everyone needs to get into the building,’” said Polidoro. 

 

But how do you make sure of that?

 

One solution could’ve been placing security outside the arena doors to control the crowd…or even setting up lines going into each door to not create such a big cluster of people, but they didn’t.

 

Leaving students outside without direction made it seem like the university either didn’t care about how everyone got in or didn’t anticipate the amount of people and level of excitement. 

 

Looking on social media at that time, HPU didn’t mention the situation outside, but they did continue to promote Flo Rida arriving and the concessions available inside the arena. This makes it seem as if the university only cared about the publicity and marketing opportunities from the concert.

 

Eventually, students were able to make it into the arena and find their way to the floor or their seats. 

 

Once Flo Rida came onto stage, the arena came alive. A majority of his most popular songs are considered “classics” by college students, and he performed all of them. “Club Can’t Handle Me,” “My House,” “Wild Ones,” “Good Feeling” and more. 

 

Flo Rida proved to be a great performer – keeping the crowd engaged, having them sing parts of a chorus or a verse, spraying champagne, giving out roses to some of the girls in the audience and bringing up two girls to have everyone sing “Happy Birthday” to them.

 

But it never fully felt like I was at a concert. The Qubein Arena is where HPU’s basketball games are played, and the entire time that was all I could think about. The lights in the arena were too bright. I could look up from the floor and clearly see someone’s face in the top row of the seats. Especially being in an indoor arena, the lighting technicians should have been able to make it darker, which would make the LED lasers stand out much more.

 

During the concert, the crowd was on their feet, phones recording, but not for all of it. Flo Rida played the opening line to his most popular song, “Low,” and killed the music just as the crowd started to sing along. He told the crowd he had to go “take some shots” backstage and would be back out soon. 

 

In the meantime, the other two performers with him, “Intl Nephew” and “Oyababy,” kept the concert going, bringing out about 20 previously chosen girls from the student section to dance on stage. The excitement immediately drained from the arena. Hands went down, phones were put into pockets and people turned to talk to their neighbors. 

 

“We didn't get tickets to go to this concert to see students we see every day on campus,” said Derrenbacher. “We came to see him.”

 

After taking the girls offstage, people were screaming the lyrics to “Wild Ones,” and you could feel the floor shaking from the pit area in front of the stage. 

 

But not for long.

 

Again, playing the opening line to “GDFR,” Flo Rida cut the music and brought about 20 guys onstage for that song. All of them seemed borderline too drunk to be up there staggering around and haphazardly dancing.

 

 “Instead of coming off as cool, it came off as pretty cringey,” said Derrenbacher. Having the groups of guys and girls onstage made it feel like a frat party, and not a concert. 

 

Thankfully, after all that, Flo Rida’s set ended in probably the best way it could have. Playing my personal favorite song, “Good Feeling,” there were smoke machines spraying, confetti cannons firing and people were enjoying it. 

 

“I think going forward we have a lot to learn from how that went overall,” said Polidoro. And they have a lot of room for improvement after that night, and with a definite loss of trust from the student body, it will take more than just a big artist to get people to show up again.

 

Although there were successes, the number of missteps ended up making students feel like this was an opportunity for HPU to impress outsiders and market themselves on social media and promotional materials.