Members of DAB held the FEST Forum in the atrium of the Lincoln Park Student Center Tuesday and lined up to write the name of their favorite artist on a large poster, which will serve as a way to gauge the popularity of different artists within the DePaul community.

After writing down the name of an artist or putting a checkmark next to a performer already written down, students were offered different FEST merchandise including water bottles, cups, and “FEST 2017” stickers to help promote the event.

Though FEST is still seven months away, students are already hard at work beginning to plan the event.

Laurel Pierce, the coordinator for FEST 2017, was able to offer some insight into the process of picking an artist every year. Pierce, along with an assistant team consisting of 12 to 13 people, work all year in order to pull together this event.

This year the 32nd annual FEST will be held on May 26, and is hosted by DePaul Activities Board (DAB). FEST occurs on the quad and tickets are available exclusively to DePaul students. Last year’s performers were The Neighborhood, T-Pain and Karmin. Over the years, DePaul has hosted a number of famous performers including Wiz Khalifa and Ludacris, just to name a few.

Juniors Luzi Watson and and Elisabeth Klain agreed that Big Sean was their favorite artist, while seniors Kristen Stahlke and Meghan McAllister said the best act was Childish Gambino.

“The FEST forum serves as a way to check out the more open-ended responses,” Pierce said.

This year the FEST team decided to add a genre section area on the poster, where students could put a check next to the genre they were most interested in hearing this May.

Pierce explained that artists such as Kanye and Beyoncé typically make an appearance on the most-wanted list, but are outside of budget constraints. The genre option on the poster allows for DePaul students to still have their voices heard, but gives more leniency to the FEST team when picking an artist that matches up with both the budget and scheduling limitations.

While one student said that she would love to see Ellie Goulding appear at FEST this year, others asked for Jack White or Arctic Monkeys. Flume, Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky and Cage the Elephant also made appearances on the banner at the forum. All genres were presented on the poster, including many famous artists and other “underground” performers.

“Chance the Rapper is really popular, but there are other rappers around here who have a lot of good albums,” freshman Ty Yamamoto said. “Noname’s mixtape is really good and it’d be great to get her here. People know her from Chance’s records.”

He also commented on the “sizable Indie Rock scene in Chicago,” but acknowledged that “people love the rap scene at DePaul.”

Yamamoto is right about the popularity of rap within the DePaul community. Underneath the genre section of the poster, rap had the most checkmarks and a large amount of the artists listed were rappers themselves.

Other students like Jake Walsh, who missed the forum, expressed their interest to see certain artists from different genres perform.

“We always have a rapper every year headlining, which is a weird transition because their opener is more indie rock usually,” Walsh said.  “I think it’d be cool to have like Two Door Cinema Club perform here, they were great at Lollapalooza.”

Once the student interest is gauged through the forums, Pierce and other team members organize the information in a spread sheet. The FEST team then gets help from a middle agent. The middle agent’s job is to help schools get in contact and book artists for various events.

“The first two questions we ask are: Who’s in budget? Who’s available?” Pierce said.

Once more information is gathered through the middle agent, a survey is sent out in mid-November asking students for their opinions once again. Last year there were about 4,000 responses from the DePaul community, equivalent to the number of tickets that are made available.

“There’s lots of behind the scenes work during winter quarter,” she said. “It’s a lot of back and forth.” The performers are in the process of being booked during winter quarter, though they are not announced until early May.

Even though FEST is still months ahead, there are plenty of ways to contribute to the cause, whether through picking an artist or taking on a more hands-on position.

“Surveys are the most direct way to be involved,” Pierce said. “You can also volunteer at FEST itself.”

If you missed the FEST Forum in Lincoln Park, there will be another one held on Oct. 18 at the Loop campus form 12-3 p.m.

FEST Committee meetings are currently being held every Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. in the Student Center room 313. These committee meetings are a great way to get involved with FEST now, before the event even begins.

Throughout the winter quarter, different events will be held to encourage excitement for FEST and to explain more about it. Last year’s events included a silent disco, and different event ideas were discussed at the last committee meeting.

Be sure to check out all the FEST events hosted throughout fall and winter quarter, and keep-up-to-date on voting for which artists you want to see perform this year.