Oklahoma Christian University’s tradition of Open Mic Night will continue Thursday, Sept. 28 outside the Prince Engineering Center, as the Soundings Literary Journal plans to host the event.
Senior Sydney Scott, the editor of Soundings, a literary and visual arts journal, said Open Mic Night serves as an outlet for the Oklahoma Christian community.
“We also use it as a fundraiser to fund our journal, which we have to print in the spring.,” Scott said. “We give it away for free. So we’ll be selling soundings merchandise and having a bake sale to get some funds for the journal, it’s one of our favorite events. We also like to do many other creative nights around campus and Open Mic Night is one of them.”
Scott said Open Mic Night always brings in a surprising mix of Oklahoma Christian students and said she enjoys seeing who might stop by once they hear the other performers.
“We get a pretty good mix and also some surprise audience members,” Scott said. “Last year, Jeff Gruenbaum did a spoken word poetry that he wrote himself and brought a bunch of Chi members with him. We also get a lot of people who are just passing by, see that we have an event and stop to listen. Sometimes they’ll even go run and grab their guitar.”
Soundings Public Relations Director Kevin McGuire said the event typically lasts an hour and a half to two hours and encourages students to perform music, poetry or spoken word.
“For Open Mic Night, we’ll have a couple hours where a space is opened up to people to come and play,” McGuire said. “We try to sign people up before the event, but there is flexibility where, if people just show up and they want to play, they have the opportunity. Open Mic Night is an event designed to make sure that as much of the campus’ different types of art and particularly music, in this case is displayed.”
McGuire said one of his favorite parts about Open Mic Night is the community it brings to students at Oklahoma Christian.
“It gives the musical talents on campus an opportunity to come and play to a large portion of the student body and share their talents.,” McGuire said. “In the past, Open Mic Night has done a good job of fostering a sense of community among students and getting a lot of people together who wouldn’t generally interact. Hopefully, with the addition of The Brew, Open Mic Night is something that can become a regular occurrence.”
Senior Laine Weatherford said she has been part of Open Mic Night for the past three years.
“Soundings started it just in the spirit of just recognizing music, spoken word poetry and art that are very valuable and a really cool part of our campus culture.,” Weatherford said. “It’s a good place for people to mingle and spend time together in a creative environment. Things get really busy and sometimes we don’t get to just chill.”
Weatherford said she encourages all students to come and participate and she is excited to see what talent Oklahoma Christian students have to offer this year.
“I think I’d love for people to participate without being afraid,” Weatherford said. “Sometimes we have trouble getting people to participate, and I think that’s because they are nervous around the crowd, or they don’t know how kind the audience will be. I think it’s a really good, safe space and it’s all about having an opportunity to practice what you love to do.”
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