2017 SING! Charter Amendments

“We worked with a deadline this year, but it wasn’t implemented into the charter. It worked really well this year. As far as I know, no one went over budget for the first time ever, so we decided to make it official.” — Winston Venderbush, senior

As the 2017 SING! season came to an end, various changes were made to the SING! charter during a Student Union (SU) Cabinet Meeting on March 23. New rules regarding the fundraising process, caucus involvement, score assignment, and use of music have been established, which will be applied in the next SING! season.

At SU Cabinet Meetings, SU Vice President Tahseen Chowdhury, voting members of the SU Executive Council, which include the caucuses, a Big Sib Chair, an Editor-in-chief of The Spectator, and a member of ARISTA’s Executive Council have the ability to vote on all matters that are proposed. However, The Spectator abstains from voting and SU President Matthew So has vetoing privileges.

Every year, a monthly meeting is dedicated to examining the SING! charter. Prior to this meeting, SING! coordinators meet with Chowdhury, So, and Coordinator of Student Affairs (COSA) Matthew Polazzo to discuss any amendments they feel are necessary.

“The coordinators, as their last act, always look at the SING! charter to make minor tweaks. This is something that happens every year and this is how we solve any problems that may arise,” Polazzo said.

This year, one of the amendments made to the charter was a limit on the amount of money each SING! grade can raise outside of the SU and through student dues. The maximum amount is now $500, and if a grade were to raise more than this allocated amount, their SING! would be penalized with a one point score deduction for every dollar spent outside of their budget.

Previously, the charter did not limit the amount of external revenue raised. “The idea is that we want to incentivize the SING!’s to go out and fundraise, but we don't want somebody to be able to write a check for $10,000,” Polazzo said.

The regulation of the budget also applies to the reimbursement of students. “Even if one decided to spend their own money on SING! and [doesn’t] ask for a reimbursement, points will still be taken off once they exceed the extra fundraising limit,” Senior SING! 2017 coordinator Winston Venderbush said.

However, some believe these changes will still allow much of the same behavior to occur because there is no one who can oversee each SING!’s budget to this extent. “The budget doesn’t mean anything if you just have somebody who has the funds to spend money on the SING! without worrying about reimbursement,” junior Ray Jones said.

New rules regarding when spending has to be reported on were also introduced into the charter. The specific deadline will be set by the SU President and the SING! coordinators. “We worked with a deadline this year, but it wasn’t implemented into the charter,” Venderbush said. “It worked really well this year. As far as I know, no one went over budget for the first time, so we decided to make it official.”

Another amendment to the charter is that caucus members who wish to be a crew director, assistant director, or writer in SING! will no longer be allowed to choose producer roles. This is the case because the SU and the COSA felt that, once chosen, producers would feel obligated to select caucus members who had supported them throughout the process.

In order to further standardize judging, policies regarding scoring were also instituted into the charter. Judges will now be asked to award integer scores to each SING!. In the past, when some judges scored in decimals and others did not, the SU and the COSA had to compare each SING! on minute differences.

Additionally, there will be a 15-point score deduction if curtains are held open after one hour’s time. “We had an issue this year with a specific SING! [holding] open the curtains after time was called,” Chowdhury said. “There was no specific rule on re-opening the curtains, so the coordinators decided on a specific point deduction that they agreed was fair. Logically, it was [unfair] to re-open the curtains, but now, we added the rule based on what happened.”

There will also be a 10-point score deduction if a SING! decides to use a song that has been done in the past two years. The rationale behind this is to encourage each SING! to be distinct from years past.

Apart from the changes noted in the charter, a SING! technology workshop was introduced by computer science teacher and SING! advisor Yulia Genkina and school aide Trevor DePew this year. Members of the tech crew and the lights and sound crew were required to attend one of three lectures regarding the technical aspects of a SING! production, the intent being to prevent anyone from getting hurt. “The goal is to establish something that everybody can go to so that everybody has the same basic knowledge,” Depew said. “[It made SING!] more efficient and pleasurable.”