ALL ABOUT PB'S GREEN KEY CONCERT
Scroll to the bottom of the page. Yes, this is our transparent attempt to get you to read the FAQs.
Green Key is Dartmouth’s big weekend in May to celebrate the arrival of spring and the end of the school year. Many different student groups and organizations take part in this weekend by hosting events. Since 2013, PB has hosted a large outdoor concert on the Friday night of Green Key Weekend. This year our concert will be held on Friday, May 16.
PB is a student-organization - we are your peers. Also, we're open to new members all the time - our weekly meetings are always open, so if you want...we could be YOU. In addition to Green Key, PB plans events throughout the year including Fallapalooza, a number of smaller concerts, comedy shows like Marcello Hernandez, and events including fan favorites like Glaze It and Barn Babies.
All Dartmouth students pay the Student Activities Fee in addition to their tuition. The total collected from the Student Activities Fee is allocated by the students on the Undergraduate Finance Committee to different governing boards and organizations, including PB. PB is responsible for using these funds to plan not only Green Key, but also Fallapalooza, our coffeehouse concerts, and other fun events like Barn Babies throughout the year.
And no, we can’t get endowment money for the concert.
Almost all our peer institutions fund their concerts through their student activity fees, but with more students paying into the fee, larger institutions can afford to bring more expensive artists. Also, they may choose to charge for students and/or guests to attend. Additionally, the date and our location in Hanover are limiting factors due to the artist’s tour dates, a number of concurrent music festivals, and other challenges getting easily to and from Hanover.
Since every undergraduate student pays student activities fee, we believe that all students have already paid for the Green Key Concert. We also recognize that not all students have additional funds to pay for Green Key and we don’t want there to be any financial barrier to attending our concert. Lastly, we would face several significant logistical challenges in fully ticketing an outdoor concert on a very open campus.
There are many factors we consider beyond the limits of our budget and artist availability, and one of the biggest is feedback from our fellow students - both on genres you'd like to see as well as specific artists. We often bring multiple genres to try and appeal to as many different students as possible.
To get feedback, PB sends surveys, solicits feedback through our Instagram (@dartmouthpb), and holds meetings dedicated just to Green Key. Also, all PB meetings are open - so people can come to any meeting with questions or feedback. We also try to review live footage from past performances and talk to our peers at other institutions for reviews or concerns that they may have had with any performers.
As said before, PB takes a lot into account for choosing artists for Green Key. We rely heavily on the first survey that we sent out to choose the most popular genres and artists that people want, so if your favorite artist/genre didn't win, ask your friends to fill out the survey too. We also welcome suggestions at all of our meetings, especially the one where we focus on Green Key, which we held a few weeks ago. We would love to hear your ideas, but we cannot read your minds, so take one of those routes to get your voice heard!
If you did fill out the first survey, first of all, thank you! We had hundreds of comments and suggestions for artists and additional genres. Unfortunately we can't represent every single artist or genre of interest at our concert, but many (e.g. folk, EDM) are often represented at other events throughout Green Key Weekend.
Some of the artists suggested are not available or within our budget for Green Key Weekend (apologies to the Noah Kahan and Tate McRae fans).
Probably more than you think.
Artist's prices are constantly changing based on demand, availability, travel expenses, chart success, inflation...etc. But one place to start is by checking the rosters on the following sites, which are based on recent quotes and recent performances. However, these may NOT reflect the price we are quoted for a concert in Hanover on our specific date. But if you're curious, you can check:
Well thanks for asking!
During Winterim/January, you had the opportunity to complete an initial genre/interest survey. You can see those results here.
Now it's time for our ARTIST SURVEY. You can complete that survey HERE! (You must log into Google with your Dartmouth email)
This survey will be open through February 24th, 2025