Student Programming Board (SPB) has released the name of the headliner for this year’s Welcome Week Concert: KYLE. The artist will perform after hip-hop artist A-Game on Aug. 25 at 7 p.m.

According to the announcement email sent on Aug. 10, KYLE is a singer, songwriter and rapper from Ventura, California best known for collaborations with artists like Lil Yachty, G-Eazy and Chance the Rapper. The e-mail was sent by Amulya Deva, president of the Student Government Association. The announcement also included information about opportunities to win backstage passes to the show through flyers hidden around campus.

Dylan Welling, concerts chair of SPB, explained how the organization takes into account students’ opinions as well as SPB’s budget when searching for an artist every year.

“I kind of listened to people, and I even sent out a survey to the campus asking people for their criticisms and their constructive feedback and what they want to see in the Welcome Week Concert,” Welling said. “I tried to be as honest with those forms as I could, and I told them in the form: for recommendations on artists, be realistic. We have a budget, so — with the information that the campus provided us — I had to make an educated decision on what I thought was the best fit and what was doable with our current budget.”

Along with Welling, assistant concerts chair and sophomore Carmen Johnson and SPB adviser Shannon Edmond also take part in the process.

“I mean, planning this kind of thing is one of the biggest events that Trinity holds, and so it’s collaborating to get all the arrangements,” Welling said. “It’s really part of all three of us to collaborate together, so while some might do more than others, we all rely on each other.”

Last year, students reacted negatively to the Welcome Week Concert. Examining the results of last year’s concert, featuring Cashmere Cat, lead to some significant discussion for SPB.

“We had a few changes of leadership between now and then. So like last year, when Cashmere Cat was the Welcome Week artist, that was really Shannon’s first year on the job, so she was kind of thrown into it,” Welling said. “And the person who had my job last year kind of disappeared during the summer and just left all the work to two people.”

The concert chairs’ advisor noted the difficulties of organizing last years concert while also stating how it helped them to grow.

“From last year to this year, I had a better sense of how the concert is and a better sense of what needs to be done prior to be sure the concert is done successfully,” Edmond said. “I know how to effectively advise the two concert chairs that we have to ensure that they’re given enough responsibility where they each have a sense of ownership over the concert as well.”

Welling emphasized the importance of the work done over the summer and explained that the absence of a complete team last year was one of the reasons that last year’s concert was not received well by the student body.

“Besides making a decision on who we should ask to perform, about 90 percent or maybe 85 percent of the work is done over the summer, so without [the job of concerts chair] being filled, the concert’s really not up to par with what we usually have,” Welling said. “So last year was kind of a fluke, and we did get a lot of bad rap for that, but it’s being taken care of this year.”

When asked about last year’s team as compared to this year, Edmond likewise stated that being intentional with their meetings and being accountable for responsibilities resulted in a clearer team cohesion overall.

“Last year it was really only one or two main meetings, but this year, this summer we’d set an expectation that communication would happen over the summer, so we had biweekly meetings, and we assigned tasks to people throughout. So throughout the two weeks that we didn’t meet, we were responsible for doing our allotted tasks,” Edmond said. “So I think this year was a lot smoother as for the planning process because we were all in communication, and I had a better idea of what to delegate.”

The Welcome Week Concert will take place on Aug. 25 at 7 p.m. on Prassel Lawn.