This past weekend, Dartmouth hosted its annual Green Key music festival, headlined by the band Grouplove. While the celebrations take place over just a few days, the weekend is the result of months of extensive planning by the Programming Board and campus organizations such as Phi Delta Alpha fraternity, which hosts its annual Block Party before the Programming Board’s mainstage concert.
The Programming Board begins planning for Green Key as soon as Fallapalooza — the organization’s annual fall concert — ends, Programming Board member Jamie Nicholson ’26 said. The board sends out an interest survey to the undergraduate student body, the results of which determine the artist genre that the organization will look for. This year, pop won by “a lot,” Nicholson said. From there, the board works with an entertainment agency to identify artists within its budget. After narrowing down the list of potential artists, the Programming Board sends out a second survey and finalizes the performer who will receive the first offer based on student interest.
But booking a Green Key headliner is not as simple as picking the most popular name from the survey. Before making an offer, the board needs approval from the College and the town of Hanover to host the outdoor concert and ensure the event complies with local safety requirements. Town manager Robert Houseman wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth that the town’s role is “limited to reviewing and approving the outdoor activities permit” to ensure “safety measures are addressed” and that activities are “managed in a code-compliant manner.”
Hanover Police Chief James Martin added that, when the town receives an outdoor activity permit application, it is reviewed by “affected Hanover departments,” including the police department. HPD focuses on public safety to ensure that “appropriate resources, staffing and emergency response capabilities are in place.”
The Department of Safety and Security is also consulted on the concert’s potential security needs, according to Safety and Security director Keiselim Montás.
“In the case of the Green Key concert, it is our practice to look into where the potential artists have performed before and how the events have gone, and to note if there are security-related issues that need addressing,” Montás wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth.
After the artist is booked, the Programming Board contacts the Hanover Chief of Police to coordinate public safety planning for the concert.
“The reason we need to get approval [from Hanover] is because we’re an outdoor concert,” Nicholson said. “We do get some pushback occasionally if there’s really explicit lyrics or if [the performer] has a weapons charge.”
Martin wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth that the Hanover Police Department develops a “comprehensive operational plan” for Green Key weekend because of the “increased calls for service and large number of attendees associated with the event.”
During Green Key weekend, HPD also borrows the Grafton County Sheriff’s Office mobile command vehicle, “which is positioned near the event area to support coordinated operations,” Martin wrote.
Student involvement director David Pack said the booking process can “vary a lot” depending on the year due to artist availability, pricing, contract negotiations and how quickly an artist’s team responds. While the Programming Board went through several options before confirming the headliner last year, this year’s outreach process was smoother, Pack said.
“This year, we were really lucky,” Pack said. “The survey data was pretty conclusive … We put in our first offer to Grouplove, and they took it. So this year, the concert was booked in January. Last year, it was booked in April.”
In an email statement to The Dartmouth before the weekend, Grouplove management team member Tia McLewee shared a statement from the band, in which its members wrote that they were “excited” to play at Dartmouth.
“We’ve heard the students at Dartmouth bring an incredible energy, and we can already tell this is going to be one of those unforgettable nights,” Grouplove wrote. “Can’t wait to dance with everyone.”
The Programming Board’s Green Key events are funded by the student activities fee, which is included in undergraduate tuition costs, Nicholson said.
In an email statement to The Dartmouth, the Undergraduate Finance Committee wrote that the student activities budget for fiscal year 2025 to fiscal year 2026 totaled $1,532,960, an increase of $58,960 from the previous year. The Undergraduate Finance Committee, made up of students, advises the Office of Student Life on allocating those funds between the Programming Board, the Council on Student Organizations, the Dartmouth Outing Club, club sports, class councils, the Homecoming bonfire and other organizations.
The Programming Board consistently gets “the largest allocation” of these funds, Nicholson said. This year, the board received “about” $406,000, around 27% of the total budget, Pack explained. The Undergraduate Finance Committee wrote in its statement that its allocations are guided by “fiscal accountability” and the “demonstrated needs of student organizations.”
Of the Programming Board’s portion of the budget, half goes to Green Key, and the rest is allocated for between Fallapalooza and Winter Carnival — which each cost about $34,000 — and other smaller events. Programming Board member Simone Chaney ’26 said the organization receives “a lot of questions” about why it does not allocate the entire budget to Green Key.
“We want to be able to provide programming throughout the year so all students are getting to see their student activities fee money be used to its fullest potential,” she explained.
Pack added that comparisons between Dartmouth and other colleges can be misleading because each institution funds student programming differently.
“People have been like, ‘Oh, we got Tufts [University]’s opener,’” Pack said, referring to Grouplove opening for Zara Larsson at Tufts University’s annual Spring Fling Concert on April 25. “Tufts’s student activities budget is … just different. We’re different institutions — the students here prioritize how the money gets divided.”
According to an April 2024 article in The Tufts Daily, the Social Collective, Tufts’s student programming board, was allocated $120,000 for booking Spring Fling artists that year, while the rest of the event budget went toward “security, staging, lighting, sound systems, food and beverage and other features.”
In contrast, Green Key’s current budget is roughly $200,000, about half of which goes to the artist. The rest pays for the infrastructure that makes the concert possible: the stage, lighting, sound and security.
“We would love to be able to book a $200,000 artist, but then we’d have no place for them to perform,” Chaney said. “I think a lot of people don’t realize how expensive production costs are.”
According to Pack, around $50,000 of the Green Key concert budget goes to Atomic, the company hired to set up the stage, lighting and sound. Another $30,000 goes to safety costs, including hiring additional support from Safety and Security, the Hanover Police Department and the Green Mountain Security company. The remaining $20,000 are for miscellaneous expenses, such as portable restrooms and trailers for the artists.
Once the artist is secured, planning “kicks into higher gear,” Pack said. At this point, the logistics are straightforward, since the board has “done it this way for almost 10 years now,” he added.
Each spring, the Board also hosts Battle of the Bands, where student bands compete for the chance to open for the Green Key headliner and a $500 grand prize. This year, the student band Avalanche won the slot.
Then comes the physical transformation of Gold Coast Lawn. The stage arrives folded up on a tractor-trailer, is opened and then raised into place. The setup takes just two days, Pack said, starting on Thursday and wrapping up around midday on Friday — just in time for sound checks.
Dartmouth’s Office of Facilities, Operations and Management handles fencing and the concert perimeter. Pack said those barriers became more important after past issues with non-Dartmouth attendees.
“A number of years back, there were a lot of high school students who were attending the event and causing some issues,” Pack said. “So we’ve locked it down a little bit more.”
Beyond the festivities hosted by the Programming Board, Phi Delta Alpha’s annual outdoor party on the Friday of Green Key has become a staple of the weekend. The event draws a crowd of around a thousand people to Webster Avenue and has expanded in the past few years to include hired, non-student bands, Phi Delt President Ahron Springer ’27 said.
“It used to be mostly just student bands, but now we’ve been expanding to an actual main act from out of campus,” Springer said.
Phi Delt hosts their own Battle of the Bands in the fall to determine which student band will open its party. Then, a committee of fraternity brothers, mostly seniors, chooses the main act. This year, the student band Shark opened for Kids That Fly, an alternative pop-rock band.
The total budget for Block Party — including staging and sound, which is also set up by Atomic — is “around $25,000,” Springer said. The funding comes from three sources: the house itself, the Interfraternity Council and the Greek Leadership Council.
Atomic began building the stage and installing sound equipment at 8 a.m. on Friday, and at 2 p.m., HPD and Safety and Security shut down Webster Avenue. The opener begins at 4 p.m.
Phi Delt social chair Alex Duffield ’27 said the fraternity’s organization of Block Party was “honestly one of the big reasons” he chose to rush the fraternity.
“It’s a really rewarding thing that we have such a big event for student musicians who really put a lot of effort into something as simple as a frat band,” Duffield said. “It’s definitely a tradition I value a lot.”
Block Party leads into the main concert, which opened its gates at 7 p.m.. By then, months of surveys, offers, contracts, barricades and sound checks had turned into a beloved spring tradition.
Green Key may seem like one weekend of music and mud. But before the crowd arrives, before the lights go up and before anyone sings along, someone has to build the stage.
Kay Alvito ’29 is a news reporter from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil studying comparative literature and creative writing. On campus, she is very involved with the arts as a member of the Rude Mechanicals classical theatre company and the dance group Street Soul.
