Comm department’s first lip sync battle draws crowd

Wednesday, October 14th, 2015 at 11:11 PM

By Tracy Geibel

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Published in: Vol. 115, No. 7

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Caleb Richardson III performed ‘A Thousand Miles’ by Vanessa Carlton along with four others at the communication department’s first lip sync battle on Saturday, Oct. 10 as part of the homecoming festivities.

It’s pretty common to lip sync your favorite Meghan Trainor song while studying alone in your dorm room, but can you imagine doing that in front of your classmates?

Taylor Green, Anna Hackel and Katherine Mazza did just that. They sang Trainor’s “Your Lips are Moving” at the first Lip Sync Battle, which was presented by the communication studies department on Saturday, Oct. 10. Green, Hackel and Mazza would win for their rendition.

“I wanted a song that we could have fun with,” Green said.

The girls were afraid of forgetting the words or messing up the dance moves. They worried the audience might not like their performance, but the judges approved.

Dr. Tim Thompson, Kristen Brockett, Dr. Anthony Esposito and Marty Esposito judged the performances on song choice, memorization, costumes and appearance, theatrics and expression and group participation.

Professor, Dr. Melissa Gibson, was watching Lip Sync Battle on television whenever she posted jokingly on Facebook saying she was going to hold a battle on campus because she felt “inspired by Anne Hathaway’s performance of ‘Wrecking Ball.’”

Her Facebook friends and Twitter followers didn’t view it as a joke, and soon it blew up on social media.

“A lot of alumni got on board and said we should do it for homecoming,” Gibson said. “So it was born from there.”

Another professor, Kathleen Golden got involved, by offering bonus points to students in her class that would perform.

However, she didn’t stop there. She too performed. While the judges were deliberating, she performed “Let it Go” from “Frozen” in a costume that she sewed together herself.

“I let the costume draw the song,” Golden said. “I was going to do a few other things, but they seemed a little too suggestive for me to be doing as the chair of the department, so I decided to do something low key.”

In fact, Gibson was also going to perform, according to Golden, and that’s why she originally agreed to be part of the show. However, even when Gibson decided to host the show instead of performing, Golden didn’t want to back out after making her own costume.

Henri Wade-Chatman, who came in second place, performed “Company” by Trey Songz. Wade-Chatman got the judges attention by singing to random people in the crowd and taking selfies with a few of them.

Khaliq Satcher, Sarah Jacko, Caleb Richardson III, Rachel Nicely and Madeline Barnes performed “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton. As the first act of the night, this group set the bar high for other performers, coming in third. Satcher and Richardson wore pink shirts and blonde wigs and ran through the crowd. While the other four lip synced, Nicely pretended to play piano.

Fourth place went to Aaron Rath and Rachael Elliot with their performance of “Agony” from the movie “Into the Woods.”

Richardson, whose group placed third, originally only performed because of the bonus points he would earn. He feared “looking like an idiot” in his blonde wig and pink shirt, but by the end of the night, he said he would do it again.

Likewise, Gibson, had begun the night saying it was the department’s first and “probably last ever” lip sync battle, however, by the end of the night, she had changed her mind.

“It was a lot of fun,” she said. “I definitely think we are going to do it next year.”

Tracy Giebel is the Campus Life Editor of The Spectator. She can be reached at campuslife.spectator@gmail.com

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