For as long as anyone can remember, March has brought a familiar sight to Austin: Thousands of local college students taking advantage of their spring break to join numerous others in hotel ballrooms and at local music and theater venues for the annual South By Southwest conference.

It's been a tradition — until now.

For the first time in at least two decades, Austin’s crown jewel of events won't be aligned with the spring breaks of the University of Texas and other area schools when it begins March 8. And the result promises to be an even more challenging scene than usual.

It will the test the limits of Austin’s various services, including police departments, transportation and businesses entities and SXSW itself.

‘It’s been difficult’

SXSW is scheduled for March 8 through March 17, while UT’s spring break will be March 18 to March 22. Other Central Texas colleges and schools with spring break dates not aligned with SXSW include St. Edward’s University, Texas State University and the Austin and Pflugerville school districts.

SXSW organizers indicated the greatest impact so far has been on its volunteer pool.

By this time last year, SXSW had filled about 3,000 volunteer spots, with a third of those being students. This year, the number stood at 2,500 going into the final days of preparation, according to Tami Richter, SXSW director of event staffing and resources.

Richter said conference organizers have been contacting colleges and organizations looking for more volunteers and will continue to recruit until the day before the conference begins.

“It’s been difficult to fill daytime shifts because of the lack of availability of prospective volunteers,” Richter said by email. “Many are students, teachers, school staff, and parents who would have normally had spring break off to partake in SXSW.”

Richter declined to say if the spring break conflict has affected the number of conference badges purchased.

UT enrolls more than 51,000 students at a campus in walking distance of the various downtown venues where SXSW takes place. In 2018, official SXSW conference events saw a total attendance of about 289,000, with a flood of people throughout the world streaming into town for the festival. This year, with even more people here than usual, traffic and safety issues are at a heightened concern.

Shared rides

City and university officials say SXSW will bring the usual street closures downtown and extra police officers on hand, but they also said more effort will be made to amplify safety and transportation messages to the public because of the extra students in town.

“We have a lot of events that occur throughout the year,” UT Police Chief David Carter said. “So we understand very well the issues surrounding special events.”

Carter said spring break typically gives the university’s police staff a chance to operate at a lower staff level since many students are not at the campus. But with the break not happening until late March, all of the department’s 100 or so officers will be available during the main portion of the conference.

Carter and city mobility officials said they’re encouraging residents to rely more on public transportation and shared rides during SXSW and ask anyone who is employed downtown to work from home if they can.

Representatives from home rental companies Airbnb and HomeAway both said that despite more students and families being in town this year during SXSW, rental rates have not been significantly affected.

Balancing demands

This year's spring break conflict can be traced to a decision made by UT’s Academic Calendar Committee, which typically starts to make calendar decisions two years in advance.

For the 2019 calendar, the committee chose to schedule spring break eight weeks after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which this year fell on Jan. 21.

That was at odds with an unofficial procedure UT usually follows, which is to schedule spring break eight weeks after MLK Day unless the holiday falls late in the month — as it did this year — in which case it’s scheduled seven weeks after. Had the unofficial rule been followed, the SXSW and UT break date ranges would have been in sync.

The Austin school district, one of several local entities that reviews UT’s calendar before it becomes public, plans its own calendar in accordance with the university's.

By the time UT and SXSW realized their schedules were off, SXSW had long signed contracts with more than 50 area hotels and the Austin Convention Center, and UT had coordinated its school year.

J.B. Bird, UT’s media relations director, said the university has encouraged professors to form their curriculum around SXSW events if they see relevant learning experiences. The university is also now including SXSW officials in the calendar review process. The two parties’ calendars are back in sync for at least the next two years, Bird said.

“The biggest impact for students is with those who want to participate in the music (tracks) and half of the interactive (conference)” due to many of those events being during the week, he said. “Students will have to balance those demands as they would throughout the academic year.”

While UT and others are trying to prepare for the odd scenario, it will be difficult to fully calculate the effects until SXSW starts, said Ryan Garrett, a general manager at downtown restaurant and music venue Stubb’s Bar-B-Q.

Stubb’s staffs about 100 full and part-time employees, with roughly 12 percent being university students.

Garrett said scheduling and other logistics for SXSW haven’t been a problem this year — yet.

The restaurant does plan to have employees work more hours than usual, but that’s typical of any SXSW period, Garrett said.

“Regardless of if it’s (SXSW), or we have a (music performance), we’ll have full staff going,” Garrett said. “We’re not going to be able to wrap our head around the impact of all of this until after the festival.”