Students from Cougar Radio hosted a Lip Sync Battle to generate interest in campus events and promote the Department of Mass Communications and Design.

Samantha Midkiff, senior Mass Communications and Design major and event organizer, had spread the word about the April 12 event with flyers and social media posts.

Two acts participated, and staffers called the event a success.

She said the idea for the event sprang from a student survey Cougar Radio staff conducted  last year asking what students wanted to see happen on campus. The Lip Sync Battle was one of the more popular options.

It was not  the staff’s first attempt at hosting a lip sync battle, but Midkiff drew inspiration from that experience to help her better organize the event.

Midkiff wanted the battle to  be a stress reliever because students are facing a time when they are “starting to kind of lose it and they’re focusing too much.”

One goal of events like this is to bring more exposure to Cougar Radio.

“When we did the survey, not many people knew we had a radio station on campus, so our goal is to obviously get our name out there and show people that we’re a thing,” she said.

She also said the event brings people together.

“We want to be able to take the students and kind of create a community with them because there’s not many things on campus that people go to. We want to be one of the groups that have that name to be like we actually do things that the students want to do,” she said.

Midkiff said she and Cougar Radio staffers are considering other events, including free concerts and possibly pizza parties during finals weeks.

“We want to do things like this because it gets people out of their dorms,” she said. “It gives them a reason to stay on campus instead of going home every weekend. Or maybe we can get more people involved with the radio station and spread the word and be like ‘Hey, I work for them. These are the things that we do’ and just spread the information.”

Falon Nonnemacher, freshman Mass Communications and Design major, said the Lip Sync Battle was an attractive idea.

“They do similar things on Jimmy Fallon and it’s really enjoyable to watch and it would probably be even more fun if it was with students, people we know.”

Nonnemacher thinks the appeal is watching friends act silly on stage.

“We’ve all seen it on Jimmy Fallon before, and it’s really fun when they do stuff like that on the show. It’ll be even more fun because you get to see your friends act like idiots above all else,” she said.

She added that people like  competition.

“Not only is it just people lip syncing, but it’s a battle, so they [the performances] gradually get more and more intense, “she said.

Nonnemacher shared Midkiff’s hope that the event will bring more attention to the university’s student-run media outlets.

“There have been several times that people have actually acted surprised after finding out that we have a radio station and a TV station here, so I really think that having a lip sync battle sponsored by Cougar Radio is going to get the message out that we have a radio station here,” she said.

“I want to see people up on stage having a great time,” Midkiff said. “I want to see their friends in the audience. I want to hear laughter. I want to see clapping. I want to see the whole thing. I just want people to have a great time,” Midkiff said.

She also wants to see the Lip Sync Battle, and Cougar Radio, grow.

“I’m hoping more people realize who we are and we become more important than the school thinks we are right now because we do events like this,” she said. “I want to come back here five years from now and see that events are going on like once a month from Cougar Radio or even just the Comm department in whole and just have people attending them. I mean, even if you get 20 people to an event, you’re successful and I just want to see that for the department.”

As a freshman, Nonnemacher said she hopes to be a part of this effort.

Midkiff expects the event will enable her to graduate knowing that Cougar Radio will have more recognition than it has had.

“I just wanted people to come out and have fun and for people to know Cougar Radio’s name.”