Every year, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed songbirds flock to Tufts with Gleek dreams swirling in their heads, completely unaware of the bloodbath that awaits them. To the naive mind, the glut of acapella groups at Tufts makes membership seem like a sure-thing. It’s not.
“I was the lead soloist in my high school choir, so I really thought I was a shoe-in,” one sobbing reject told our correspondent.
“I’ve been on America’s Got Talent, for crying out loud!” said his equally bereaved friend.
While Bama Rush boasts a Netflix documentary, Tufts’ gauntlet of acapella groups have left a legacy immortalized in the Pitch Perfect trilogy and the acapella craze of the early 2010s. What they leave out, though, is the mysterious, ritualistic similarities between the two recruiting events.
“They’re called the Beelzebubs for a reason. Nobody sounds that good without demonic rituals!” a shell-shocked auditioner told our Zamboni correspondent. “I had no idea what I was in for. All the judges wore black robes that hid their eyes and silently decided our fates with a wave of the hand. Those who failed to impress were dragged off stage, and they haven’t been seen since.”
“I heard they pick the best singers and then harvest their voices like in The Little Mermaid,” an anonymous source wrote to us.
In shadowy rooms, locked basements, and encoded group chats, fates are decided that would make even a cutthroat Alpha Phi shudder. Those two elusive, door-opening words –”good fit”– haunt every breathless candidate. Do you belong? Are you a better fit for the Amalgamates or SQ? Your skills are analyzed, bartered, compared – does Full Sound need you as much as you need them?
As auditioners vie for membership to award-winning groups, even acceptance is not sure to bring satisfaction. Like an orange-skinned Zeta legacy opening a GPhi bid, some hopefuls cry, “I wanted to be a ‘Mate, I don’t want to be a Low-Key!”
An anonymous acapella recruiter told us, “I don’t know what people expect. You come to this artsy-fartsy-indie-weirdo school and think you’re the only annoying theater kid? Calm down, Rachel Berry, you’re not special. I don’t know if you even went to last year’s Spring Fling, but half the crowd could keep up with Zara Larsson’s runs and they didn’t even try out for us.”
Remember, ye unwise hopefuls, the immortal words of Victoria Justice: “I think we all sing.”
