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Quick Questions with Emily Cochran

The Talon staff sat down with Emily Cochran, the assistant director for Spring Sing, to discuss why she joined the executive team and what audiences can expect from this year’s show.

Why did you decide to become a Spring Sing executive?

I really wanted to get involved in a more executive role as event coordinating, because I love the show, I love being in it and I’m really passionate about it, but it was more of the experience of going from a professional standpoint. I’m a marketing major, so it’s up my alley—event coordination, communication, that kind of thing. And working with my friends in clubs.

What was the inspiration for the theme “2020 Vision”?

I feel like that’s a common theme across the board in a lot of channels this year. 2020 always has that connotation. Every year, we try to get more and more broad with what the overall theme is, and this year it was the fact that we wanted the shows to be as different as possible and to give them a category of anything in the world, so there wouldn’t be a million Disney shows, a million of this. We wanted to find some diversity, so we figured if we gave them a blank slate, they would just run with it.

What is the philanthropy project this year, and what does it mean to the community?

This year’s philanthropy is NewView Oklahoma. That is an organization, a nonprofit, that helps people with visually impaired disabilities. They have different sorts of classes, and it’s a community for our bigger community. We really took that as the “2020 Vision” scope. We wanted to find something that went along with that. We did the play on words with “vision” with NewView. We’re really focusing on the literal aspect of new vision from that organization.

How does Spring Sing influence Oklahoma Christian culture?

I feel like that’s one of the most massive impacts on this campus. Everybody knows what Spring Sing is, even if you’re a part-time professor. It’s always interesting to see people’s attitudes—it’s either really positive or really negative. I feel like it has a very dramatic impact on campus. I feel like for most, it’s pretty positive, but it can have a negative connotation to people who don’t enjoy that kind of show, or they feel isolated in their own thing that isn’t club or Spring Sing. They feel like theirs isn’t as appreciated. But I feel like overall it’s a pretty positive reaction.

What’s something about your position you were totally unprepared for?

I’ll be honest, I’m assistant director. I wasn’t supposed to be assistant director. I went in being communications, which they added last year. We had somebody decide not to be on executive committee this year, so I stepped up to be assistant director.

I was kind of blind to my position already, like I knew the basis of what I was going to be doing, but I didn’t get the full grasp of what that would entail. I’m in a lot more practices than I realized, which I love. That’s my favorite part, but I wasn’t expecting it. I think the in-between communication between directors—we all kind of do the job together. It’s not so segregated based off of what our individual responsibilities were. We’re all included in every email, so I’ve gotten to do a lot of communication with different directors and other executives to help them keep things in order and make the show great.

What are you most excited about for this year’s show?

It’s so cool to see it from the very beginning, to see it from a concept to it being a final product of something that’s such a major event here. It’s really getting to see people in a different view, specifically the clubs. I’ve gained a lot of respect for different clubs that I didn’t know very well before, I just kind of had an outsider’s perspective where I didn’t know anything but made those judgments. Watching them work so hard to make this show amazing and getting to gain that sense of community within each club has been really cool to watch.

What is your favorite Spring Sing memory?

I think it was really growing up coming here. I loved Spring Sing my entire life. I would come up with my parents—my dad used to work here—to the Thursday show. Just watching people sing their hearts out and dance, it was everything that I ever dreamed of doing. Then coming here and getting to act that out with my own club has been really awesome.

Spring Sing has happened every year for decades. Why do you think it’s been so popular for so long?

Good question. I think it brings a sense of camaraderie. At the same time, it has competition, which I feel like our community thrives off of. Anything that’s competitive, people get involved in. If it was just for fun, they wouldn’t. There is competition, but at the same time, they realize that we’re all a community. There are plenty of people in a club who will watch other clubs’ shows most of the time when they look at the archives. They don’t focus as much on themselves as they do on other clubs and how they’re doing. It builds the sense of respect for each other’s clubs on campus.

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