When Peadar woke up the morning of October 18th, the weather seemed to have different plans than he did. “It was sheeting down rain,” he told The University Times, but when the ents committee started setting up, the sky cleared, and the rain stopped. With the sun setting on the Pav, Peadar, Trinity College Dublin Students Union Ents Officer, nearly started crying when he saw it all coming together.
The event was a smash. A thousand six hundred tickets were sold through Fixr, with a thousand seven hundred and fifty people in total in attendance. Ents had set up two bars, fenced off the area in front of the Pav, and, working together with Reboot, managed to set up a stage. A team of twenty security people and nineteen from the Ents committee worked to make sure everything ran smoothly on the night.
It was the biggest Pav event ever held at Trinity; and the biggest event of its kind hosted by any university in Ireland. “Selling out 1600 tickets in a little over a day was a level of satisfaction I have never experienced before – from this job, and from last year in JCR. I was over the moon,” stated Peadar.
With security concerns raised in the wake of past Pav events, the Ents team asked participants to bring their T-cards to gain entrance. Although some people were turned away because they failed to bring their T-cards, Peadar expressed that the security measures helped ensure a successful event, ensuring that crowd control measures were put in place: “By having that kind of strict system in place, it made sure we didn’t have any issues during the night”. Additionally, the fences were raised to discourage people from sneaking in, and extra security was put in place around the bars to prevent any “borrowing” of alcohol from the bars.
Although the event was sold out, and tickets were set at ten euros a piece, Peadar emphasised that the event operated at a seven to eight grand loss. He expressed that a lot of the costs were first-time costs related to scaling and permits, but that the loss was outweighed by the success of the event: “I think myself and the Student Union, we’re willing to get behind it, even if it does mean we’re going to lose some money on it, for the enjoyment, the satisfaction that it gives to the student body, and also because it’s not been done in any other college in Ireland”.
While he and the entire Ents team have ambitions of making the next Pav event even bigger, Peadar said he was content with keeping the format as it is for the rest of his tenure. For the next big Pav event in April, however, he hopes to expand the event even further with up to 2000 attendees, another bar, and an international headliner.
Moral of the story: next time, get yourself a ticket – and remember to bring your T-card.
