Every year, people from corners of the world head to Manchester, Tennessee, for Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, a four-day weekend in a field stuffed to the brim with performances, art displays, workshops and vendors.
People go to Bonnaroo for different reasons: To see their favorite artists, to get away from everyday life, to meet new friends – or to get class credit.
Last year should’ve been my first Bonnaroo. I was confirmed to volunteer on The Farm and received free admission and camping in return for a few six-hour shifts. I packed my bags and bought groceries. We planned to leave Wednesday morning, a day before the music started.
However, my body had other plans. What I thought was a stomach ache turned out to be a partially ruptured appendix. I missed the festival, spending five nights in the hospital and hearing about Chappell Roan’s Bonnaroo debut set from an unfamiliar bed.
This year, after a summer of recovery, I tried again. I was one of a handful of MTSU journalism students selected to attend Bonnaroo as a working media member. For three weeks, we met as a class nearly every day, learning festival reporting skills, writing preview stories and planning to work on The Farm.
On June 12, seven writers, a photographer and our professor hopped into an MTSU van and journeyed a few miles south of Murfreesboro, to Manchester, where the festival planned to host acts like Olivia Rodrigo, Hozier and Insane Clown Posse.
Day one gave the class a taste of the weekend to come, or so we thought. Student journalists ran about The Farm collecting their respective stories, like the coverage of the annual Shotgunaroo and a recap of headliner Luke Combs. After a 17-hour day, everyone had a published piece to show for their hard work.
Day two on The Farm started with high spirits. Then came the thunder. Not ten minutes after arriving at the festival, we evacuated the press room due to lightning in the area. We trekked back to the van to sit out the storm.
The evacuation was surprising – weeklong forecasts hadn’t called for long, severe storms. I expected to be back on the grounds within an hour.
In the van, we posted breaking news weather updates and wrote a feature story about the communities that can stem from unexpected conditions at a festival like Bonnaroo.
After six hours of working in the MTSU van, Bonnaroo’s official X account posted an update. We were all expecting a post telling people that Centeroo was back open and evening shows would go on. Though the afternoon acts were long gone, an array of artists were lined up for the evening; some people were most excited for headliner Tyler, the Creator or smaller acts like Rainbow Kitten Surprise.
To everyone’s disappointment, the update announced a cancellation of the entire weekend. I read the update to the van full of students before reading it to myself. As we sat in a swamp of Subarus, hippies and mud, the news was devastating. Three weeks of anticipation and preparation felt instantly ripped from my hands.
We came here for class, for experience, for the festival experience that I never had before.
The van went quiet. I took a walk around the flooded parking lot, attempting to hide my disappointment. I saw Bonnaroovians checking their phones, reading the news for the first time.
“You just got the same news as me,” one camper said to a group of girls shocked by their phones.
As if the cancellation wasn’t defeating enough, our trusty white van didn’t stand a chance against the flooded parking lot. However, we left victorious, pushing it out of the mud and eventually onto the gravel drive.
Though the weekend was cut wildly short, the class remains incredibly useful. We didn’t get to see the weekend in totality as we anticipated, but the experience of real deadlines, real critiques and working on a media team will stick with me.
I saw this class as an opportunity to gain real-world experience, make new connections and attend Bonnaroo while getting college credit. By those standards, I succeeded.
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