Concert season is the best time of year – outdoor events, warm sunshine on your skin, dancing, music and friends. However, it can quickly be not so fun when people act poorly; like at our Spring Concert with Juicy J and Drake Bell.

1. Show up ready to have a good time

That means if you are leaned over trying to pull trigger outside of the venue, you’re not there to have a good time. You overdid it on the pregame, you screwed up and you need to go home. Vomiting on the ground, in a port-o-potty, or, heaven forbid, on someone else is not okay. If you’re going to drink and use drugs, do so safely and responsibly. What good is a concert if you’re too messed up to have fun? You can always party afterward.

2. Don’t throw things

Come on, guys. Don’t eat half an orange and throw it at the poor comedian. I don’t care how bad he is, you’re being rude, you’re giving Mavericks a bad rep and you’re making it unsafe to perform at Mesa. How are we supposed to keep getting people to come to a school to perform when someone was hit with flying objects at our last concert?

3. If you mosh, you mosh with respect

Jump up and down, scream and have a good time. But if one more girl who’s too intoxicated to function gets trampled again, I don’t know if we’ll get to keep getting to mosh here at Mesa. So if you see someone struggling, help them. Do not run over them, and if you cannot get with the mosh, move out of the way.

4. Don’t smoke at the concert

Smoke before. I get wanting to smoke a blunt for Juicy J or for concert season or just because it’s six at night and you want to have fun and why not? But the concert is a shared space with a lot of other people who may not like the smell, may not like breathing it in and may not want to be around that. And you have to at the very least respect that.

5. Know the hierarchy

It is essential that the front of the crowd be the loudest, most enthusiastic and pumped of all the people who show up for a concert. If you are on the fence about the performers, about being at the concert, about the potential of marijuana smell, etc, you belong at the back of the crowd. This is the hierarchy. Learn it, live it, love it. If you find yourself not wanting to be there, leave.

6. Actually enjoy it

That means take your Snapchat (one or two), and put your phone away. It’s draining to see an entire crowd’s phones, not their faces, but their phones. Concerts are about feeling alive and enjoying music and the company around you, not about filming your every moment. (You can be sure to leave that to us, the photographers running around backstage). How are you supposed to make memories that last a lifetime when you’re too preoccupied with trying to get them on camera?

Keeping these things in mind while attending future concerts will help ensure that our concerts are safe, respectable and fun. Mesa’s concerts are opportunities to connect students and create amazing memories.