By Luke Lattanzi | Staff Writer
One additional All-University Sing act, Alpha Tau Omega’s “Nothing Set in Stone,” has been added to Pigskin Revue 2024 due to a scoring tabulation error within the judging process.
“Upon the conclusion of this year’s All-University Sing performances, Student Activities became aware of a scoring tabulation error which, although limited in its impact, did result in one additional act being added to Pigskin Revue 2024,” a statement from Student Productions read. “Consequently, we will have nine acts instead of eight for next fall’s Homecoming show with the ninth and final invitation being extended to Alpha Tau Omega.”
No other award placements were affected by the error.
Wake Forest, N.C., senior William Deal, an Alpha Tau Omega Sing chair, said the fraternity qualifying for Pigskin was surprising and exciting news. He said the group is glad its inclusion was due to the merit of its act.
“It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, we’re adding an extra group to fix it,’ [but rather,] ‘Oh, you guys earned your spot in Pigskin,’” Deal said. “There was a mistake on their end, and that’s fine. They can deal with that. But we rightfully earned the spot in there. And so just kind of coming to that realization, especially six days after you hear the final result, it was really cool.”
Deal said the fraternity found out about the scoring tabulation error through a meeting held between its Sing chairs and the head of Student Productions on Friday, shortly before Student Productions announced it on social media.
Each year, Sing acts are judged by a panel of 16 judges. All acts are given a total score out of 100, divided into five categories: entertainment value (30 points), musical quality (20 points), choreography (20 points), creativity (15 points) and theme development (15 points).
To determine a final score, the highest and lowest scores are dropped to leave a total of 1,400 points, which is then divided by the total number of judges. According to Deal, the judges made the mistake of dropping Alpha Tau Omega’s second lowest score instead of its true lowest score. The difference between those numbers, he said, was significant enough to erroneously exclude the fraternity from Pigskin.
Deal said that during the meeting, the fraternity’s Sing chairs were informed that only one person did the final score tally.
“I’m sure what they would probably do from now on is, rather than have just one person do this tally, they’d probably have two to three sets of eyes look over it,” Deal said.
The Lariat reached out to Student Productions for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
