Step Sing is a sacred tradition that allows students to compete with their friends for a chance of winning the Step Sing Sweepstakes.
As we look back on the celebration of the 75th anniversary, we cannot miss the dark side of Step Sing: the incredible amount of judgement and negativity.
During the season, groups often try to keep their show a secret, but more often than not, a few leaks are given out through those competing. With an urgency to share what they know with friends, students run to a social outlet to share their thoughts.
Apps like Fizz allow those with emails connected to the university to publicly share their opinions anonymously. This anonymous posting takes away any fear of consequence a person may have for completely berating a group.
Conversations that may have stayed in private group messages become public with no followable trace to the original poster. Between these posts and conversations among peers, groups are compared and ranked before they hit the stage.
Although each group has their fair share of backlash, certain groups with a common ground seem to face more judgment from their peers.
Independents.
During the Step Sing season, rumors of former groups such as Spectrum always resurface with a partially shared idea that no show will be worse than theirs. The reputation of being the lowest rated show continued following this group after their demise.
Quick research on the Fizz app showed that more than 400 people agreed that last year’s Freshman Girls show about New York was the worst of 2024, with over 100 agreeing this year’s show is to be a disaster also.
Between these two groups, enough hate comments have been shared to overpower any comment about a Greek affiliated group. This could be considered bullying in many ways, but many anonymous warriors do not even think about it.
Since these independent groups are not part of a bigger organization they lack the familiarity of their peers because of the distractions. It could also be that these independent groups suffer from the lack of experience within the organization
It is hard to determine why exactly these groups received the amount of criticism they did.
Creating a show takes many factors that a well-developed group such as Alpha Delta Pi, last year’s Sweepstakes winners, are already prepared for. Generational knowledge within groups is a huge factor independent and newfound groups must overcome.
Although bullying and gossip around Step Sing is unfortunate, it won’t be completely avoidable as long as students are able to post anonymous comments. Even then it might continue.
It may only stop after it has already gone too far, which is how a lot of bullying ends. Hopefully, it will never get that bad.
Staff Writer
