75th annual IU Sing starts Friday

Yellow school busses have been sitting outside the IU Auditorium for the past two nights to shelter students from freezing temperatures. Twenty-one acts hurry from the buses to the stage and back to individually prepare for a show that involves more than 3,000 students and has become one of the largest events on campus.\nThe 75th annual IU Sing begins tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the IU Auditorium. Nineteen acts performed by various sororities and fraternities, along with one act from Collins Living-Learning Center and one act from the Army ROTC will compete against each other in what IU Sing Steering Committee member Amanda Moore said is one of the longest running traditions on campus.\nThe IU Sing Steering Committee came together in August to begin work on the show and to pick the theme for the 75th anniversary of IU Sing, said Director of IU Student Foundation Jenny Bruffey.\n"We wanted to do something that celebrated that milestone," Bruffey said.\nThis year's theme is "A Lifetime in Lights." Instead of having each organization come up with a theme for its act from scratch, each was asked to pick a theme from the past 74 years of the event, Moore said.\n"We're celebrating all previous themes from IU Sing and putting them all in this show," Moore said. "It's a lifetime of IU sing."\nPreparation for IU Sing is demanding for the students involved.\n"Oh my God, we've been practicing like every night," said freshman Lindsay Weiss of Kappa Kappa Gamma. "It takes a lot of time and a lot of practice."\nFreshmen Sarah Whitaker of Delta Gamma and David Snuckel of Acacia have been practicing four or five days a week for two to three hours a day since the beginning of the semester. Snuckel said practice sometimes relieved stress for him because it was something different than going to class everyday and doing homework.\n"It was another fun experience," Snuckel said. "You meet a lot of girls."\nThe hard work of each act will be displayed in a four- to six-minute performance. Nine judges will score each act on a scale of one to 10 in four main categories, such as musicality, Bruffey said. Acts will lose points if 50 percent of their performance is not sung. This rule was instituted last year because people felt the show was losing its musical aspect and becoming more of a play than a mini musical, Bruffey said.\n"This was a really good rule change for us to make," Bruffey said.\nActs can also lose points for actions outside of their performance.\nWhile one act is performing there will be another act on the dock to the right of the stage and another act below the stage in a chorus room, said Steering Committee member and former IU Sing participant Brian Swanson.\n"We can't have an act of 80 some people talking because the audience will hear it," Swanson said.\nSwanson also said that some people have the misconception that the event is only for the greek community.\n"It's open to the whole student body," Swanson said. "We try to include anybody who wants to be part of it."\nTickets are $18. All proceeds go to working student scholarships, Swanson said. This year the Student Foundation is awarding 18 scholarships totaling $4,800 at the end of Saturday's show during the awards presentation, which will begin at 9:30 p.m.