WGSU Genny Fest to be held May 6

Photo at Genny Fest via Ben Gajewski ‘07

After a two year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 Genny Fest will be held Friday, May 6. The festival includes live music, food trucks, and performances by student dance groups between music sets, as well as live radio interviews on WGSU with performers FXRRVST and Geneseo alum Allison Leah ‘18.  

The festival will take place 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. and is free for Geneseo students, with proceeds from the event funding WGSU radio and future Genny Fest events. Performances and food trucks will be located outside of the MacVittie College Union, or in the Union Ballroom in the event of rain. 

According to the Geneseo website, the annual festival began in 2018 with inspiration from previous WGSU events. 

“WGSU’s first Genny Fest on April 27, 2018 has roots going back to another station-sponsored live outdoor music festival, ‘Party in the Valley’ on May 3, 2015; and, even further, to a WGSU co-sponsored ‘Rock Video Dance Party’ on April 18, 1984,” the website says. 

Sarah DeVito, junior communications major and WGSU marketing director, said that the 2020 and 2021 festivals were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but that an online “Gen-E Fest” was held in 2020. 

“Exclusively because of COVID, the last two years have been cancelled. We did make the most of it and actually hosted a “Gen-E Fest” online, so there's really only been one year without any Genny Fest, but we’re excited to go back to in-person events and performances,” DeVito said. “This year we’re putting on a little music festival. We have two musical acts performing, we have six food trucks coming, and we will have OGX and the G Steppers performing in between sets.”

DeVito said that she hopes to expand the festival in coming years once Genny Fest starts annually again. 

“In 2019, we were going to have one that was actually going to be in the village. It was going to be bigger than any of the other ones we had done before with more acts and local businesses getting involved. Unfortunately, then the pandemic came around, but we are definitely looking into doing that again as an option for next year. We're not really sure quite yet because we have to see what's going on with the world and what's going on with the community, but yeah, we hope to be able to move on to a larger venue at some point,” she said. 

According to DeVito, Genny Fest’s return to in-person events has been planned since last Sep., and WGSU has met with several departments to ensure the festival can return. 

DeVito said, “This has been in the works since probably the end of September. That was just when discussions were getting started, and then towards the end of last semester we started seriously thinking [about] it. It actually has been super easy as far as the administration has gone. We have to work pretty closely with [Campus Auxiliary Services] in order to have the food trucks come so that has probably been the most intensive part of this whole process, but the college actually made it pretty easy for us. Ultimately, we ended up having a meeting with probably seven or eight different departments and having one big Genny Fest planning meeting that streamlined the process.”

DeVito said that since Genny Fest is a free event, it does not make very much money for WGSU. Any proceeds from the event will go towards funding WGSU and future Genny Fests since WGSU is not funded by the Student Association (SA) like other clubs. 

“[WGSU is] actually not SA funded—we are part the communication department and all of our funding comes from either the department or the Friends of WGSU Foundation, so this event is not student funded at all. It’s pretty much all out of WGSU’s pocket. Any proceeds will mostly just be going back to funding the next Genny Fest, that's the main thing. We don't really have a lot of profit that we'll be getting from this though since it's a free event, but yes, the money will be going back to WGSU and Genny Fests.” 

Per the Geneseo website, DeVito said that “The WGSU staff has been working hard putting Genny Fest together and we can't wait for everyone to enjoy the event. It should be a fun-filled day for all!”