Sing Song will razzle and dazzle audiences will its 50th show this weekend, allowing students to show off a wide range of talents.

Although the show began 50 years ago as a way for students to showcase their singing, the extravaganza now brings students of various disciplines and talents together.

A single act requires a director, choreographer, lyrics writer, costume designer, video creator, composer, dozens of students willing to devote time to practice, and someone with enough organization skills to bring all those students together.

And that’s just one act.

The show also includes six hosts and hostesses who prepare for months, training their voices and bodies so they can be at peak performance level for three rehearsals and three shows in four days.

The university dance team, Shades Step Squad and Hispanos Unidos also work for weeks tuning their talents to their highest tier.

And Sing Song wouldn’t impress audiences with the same vitality and glamour without sound, lighting and video technicians and technology experts.

Three multitalented co-chairs pull all these students together and work with the director of Student Productions, Kendall Massey, to make Sing Song a truly professional show, worthy of three full houses.

Anyone who says Sing Song is just about club rivalry and silly costumes is just plain wrong.

Although many students don’t participate in the show, no other single event on campus brings together so many diverse groups of students working toward the same goal. For one week, more than 1,000 students and many faculty and staff members share a common objective: surviving Sing Song.

Sing Song epitomizes tradition at the university. Bob Hunter, vice president emeritus, created Sing Song to further the traditional image of Abilene Christian College as “the singing college.” Although the event doesn’t make much sense to people unfamiliar with it, the university is known for the yearly musical show.

And if our university is known for putting on a production that showcases the diverse talents of 1,200 students and allows them to glorify God with those talents, we can’t find anything wrong with that.