While an estimated 30,000 community members and students soak in the music, food and culture from this weekend’s Mallard Madness, few will realize that only a small group of students are actually responsible for the event becoming a reality.
Six months ago, five students met with a goal in mind, unsure if their aspirations would ever materialize into something. Brian Allen (ASUO), Lex Chase (KWVA), Geoff Nudelman (Cultural Forum), Teresa Chan (Residence Halls) and Noah Wolf-Prusan (Jewish Student Union) all felt there was a need for a collaborative effort that combined many spring activities into one all-encompassing weekend.@@http://www.dailyemerald.com/2011/04/28/asuo-disperses-surplus-funds-votes-on-new-senator/@@ @@http://culture.uoregon.edu/bio/1355@@ @@http://www.luciddesigngroup.com/customernews/university_of_oregon_residence_halls_compete_in_national_contest_for_energy_reduction.php@@
“We saw (that) in the spring, a lot of events were going on,” said Allen, who handles logistics and advertising for Mallard Madness. “We felt there was a lack of unity. We thought, ‘Why not bring them all together?’”
Meeting since early October, the group of students saw that the middle of spring term was filled with multiple events. The Willamette Valley Music Festival, the ASUO Street Faire and KWVA’s Birthday Bash all typically landed around the same dates. Bringing all of these events together on the same weekend at the University seemed like a perfect idea.
We wanted an event every year that students could look forward to that wasn’t attached to sports,” Wolf-Prusan said.

With such a great idea, the students then had to figure out how they were going to pay for it. Their goal was to keep the event completely free.
“Our main hurdle was that we didn’t have any funding,” Allen said. “We all felt we were going to make this happen, even if we had to write a personal check for the concert.”
Understanding that the group had a large obstacle to overcome, the five spent the majority of fall term planning and working to draft a proposal to present to the ASUO. Having successfully drafted a reasonable plan, the ASUO granted $65,000 from the Over-realized Fund. The group was also able to secure $6,000 from the Residence Hall Association, as well as another $3,000 from the Office of Student Affairs.@@http://www.dailyemerald.com/2011/04/28/asuo-disperses-surplus-funds-votes-on-new-senator/@@
Finally funded, the five, none of whom had planned an event of this scale before, began the process of creating the festival.
“We rolled with it. We didn’t really know what to expect,” said Chase, the one behind much of the advertising and marketing for Mallard Madness.
The next clear step for the group was to find the music. Researching a variety of musicians, the students tried to find acts that were both engaging, while also sampling a number of musical genres.
“We spent a lot of time thinking about what acts we can afford with this money. We were looking for the biggest bang for our buck,” Chase said.
With hours of debating about what music would best suit the event, Mallard Madness eventually booked a solid blend of big names like Yeasayer, RJD2 and A-Trak, while also representing a good chunk of local music.
Because of the amount of focus the planners had to spend on finding, funding and booking music, the organizers had not had the time to concentrate on logistics.
“We started almost backwards,” Allen said. “We got all of these musical acts to say that they’d come, and then we started planning the actual event.”
The order seemed to work, though, as the meetings with fire marshals, Department of Public Safety, UO Campus Recycling Program and other important organizations that go into making such a large event feasible went smoothly.@@http://pages.uoregon.edu/recycle/site_map.htm@@
With everything taken care of — and an extra $6,700 of funding just granted from the ASUO surplus — the planners can now enjoy all of the work that went into Mallard Madness. Of course, the group doesn’t hope to simply enjoy everything they’ve done for only one weekend. With more planning, they hope Mallard Madness will become an annual event.
“This is all about building a future,” Wolf-Prusan said.