After defeating 80+ other universities across the US in a 48-hour National Pre-Sale competition for the Up & Up Festival, UO won a performance from producer and house artist Matroda. Sponsored by Monster Energy, Up & Up empowers students to rally college communities and win their music festivals featuring headlining EDM artists for campuses nationwide. Started in 2016, Up & Up uses crowdsourcing by students to build demand in hopes of bringing a headliner to their college town. Over the past eight years, Up & Up has successfully hosted 43 college festivals with 23 different headliners.

In the Up & Up crew, student ambassadors are responsible for building excitement and spreading the word about which headliner will hopefully come to the University of Oregon. The team consists of three student campus directors and a total of 16 student ambassadors who work two seasons, fall and spring, to execute promotions, public relations and coordination of the event. Mia Caldwell, a senior at UO and the student campus operations and events director, has been a part of Up & Up for four seasons. She joined Up & Up during her sophomore year at Oregon after falling in love with DJing as a COVID-19 hobby.

The Up & Up works as a team, and the ambassadors are split up according to their different skills, Caldwell said. The student ambassador team is split into three sections — the Greek life relations team employs students who are either social chairs or VPs of their sorority or fraternity, the socials team handles tasks like posting on social media, making graphics and connecting the team to other accounts like Eugene Nest, The Freshman Class Page, Red Cup and Barstool, and the events team, lead by Caldwell, oversees events.

Thanks to the hard work of the student ambassadors, Matroda came to Eugene and delivered an energetic and dynamic set with European flair. The Croatian-born house artist is on a massive tour across the US and stopped in Eugene to put on a show before playing three more consecutive shows in Brooklyn, Boston and Las Vegas. Matroda secured the 25th spot on Tracklist1001’s prestigious chart, after achieving multiple Beatport #1 hits and amassing over one million monthly listeners on Spotify.

The Up & Up team was able to add Matroda to the list of headliners that have come through Eugene, along with TroyBoi, Chris Lorenzo, Dr. Fresch and Disco Lines. Starting from scratch in the Fall of 2019 and growing to almost 4,000 followers this past season, the Up & Up brand has grown substantially on the UO campus thanks to the UO student ambassadors.

The team allows students to meet people in the music industry and connect with those passionate in the field of music. “You never know what to expect. Being backstage, getting to work so closely with an artist and letting our local DJs perform for all their friends is just so exciting,” Caldwell said. “There’s never a sad face in the crowd.”

For these ambassadors, it has been a way to connect with music, meet headliner DJs and make a memorable experience for their friends and other students that will outlive their time here at the university.

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