By Jonathan Smith, Managing Editor

Sing Song doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I’ve been to two shows now, and I seemed to have missed the appeal of choreographed arm motions, smiles the size of the Cheshire Cat’s and completely destroying your voice in the days leading up to the show.

But for a few hours Saturday, Sing Song and I understood each other; it made sense.

I was able to go backstage during Saturday afternoon’s performance, and what I saw there gave me a different perspective than anything I had ever witnessed just watching the Sing Song stage.

For an event that is supposed to bring ACU together-both alumni and current students-if all you ever saw was what happened inside Moody Coliseum, you might get the impression that Sing Song is about separating the campus, at least the clubs and classes.

That’s not what I saw, however, backstage Saturday in the double gym.

At first glance, it was a very divided gym-each club or class huddled into separate corners of the room practicing. But as acts would finish on stage and come back into the gym, groups would stop what they were doing to cheer them back in, sometimes even forming tunnels for the returning group to run through.

Even in the middle of competition, the clubs and classes weren’t too short-sighted to forget to support the others going through exactly the same thing they were.

Having never actually participated in a Sing Song act myself, all I usually hear about getting an act ready is how much work and how many hours go into it-never how much fun people are having. Saturday, there was a lot of work, but people were having fun too. As groups would finish their acts, they would come back into the gym celebrating and excited to be done.

For a few hours Saturday afternoon, I saw the campus come together for Sing Song. Granted, once the results were announced and the initial relief of the end of the show had passsed, grumbling began about what class or club deserved or didn’t deserve what they got.

That was what I had been used to seeing: an event that divided instead of unifying. But for a show so popular and beloved by so many students and alumni, I always knew there had to be more to it.

For a few hours Saturday, I was able to see that.