President of Lip Synch David Gibert (right) and Vice President Joey Brown (left) emcee the event at The Pavilion on Friday, February 11th. Photo by Billy Crosby

There’s a sense of excitement in the air as the lights dim in the Pavilion and the emcees enter stage right and say, “Welcome to Lip Synch.”
 
Lip Synch is a fundraising activity to raise money for the Rockbridge Area Food Pantry. Each year, on average, W&L students raise about $8,000 to donate. Each team must pay a $200 entry fee to participate, and each ticket costs $10. This year 24 teams came up with a song and dance routine to perform in front of members of the W&L community, Friday, Feb. 11.

“You have no idea how happy we are for that money,” said Rockbridge Area Food Pantry employee Mary Bergen. “It’s a blessing.” The Food Pantry is part of the Rockbridge Area Relief Association, RARA, which helps area families in a variety of different ways. RARA provides shelter, pays electric bills for families with children, and provides food to the needy. Food donations usually come from the United States Department of Agriculture, but to provide a variety of foods they have to buy other goods from Kroger and Walmart. “It’s a constant struggle getting the money in and paying it out,” said Bergen. “We are grateful for everything we get.”

The Lip Synch committee is made up of W&L senior David Gibert, junior Joey Brown, and sophomore Perry Given. These three students have been preparing for this night for two months. Neither Gibert nor Brown really knew what they were getting into when they first agreed to be a part of this event.  Gilbert said, “When I was a sophomore, two upperclassmen who I knew pretty well approached me, and asked me if I would help them out with it. And now I’m president.” Brown had a very similar experience, saying, “I didn’t really understand what it was my freshmen year, but I knew a senior who was the president and he asked me if I could help him out. I really enjoyed doing it, and was glad that I got asked to do it again.”

For a charity event, Lip Synch can get very competitive. A panel of four judges sits and decides each group’s score. If judges don’t like the group, they can “gong” them off before they finish. There is one person standing by a gong, and if he gets the word from the judges he hits the gong signaling the group to exit the stage. However, this doesn’t always happen as smoothly as it sounds. Many of the groups refused to exit and continued to yell at the judges and the gong crew for making them stop. At one point in the event, Gibert asked the audience, “What do y’all think of the gong crew?” to which the audience collectively shouted, “BOOOO!”

The funds raised by Lip Synch do a great deal to help out the community, but this year there was a problem. “The machine that takes student IDs malfunctioned and deleted all of ticket sales from Friday, so we lost all of those funds,” said Gibert. He estimates that this could be a loss of about $1,000. Despite this loss, he says they still raised around $7,000 to donate.

Vice President Joey Brown was very pleased with how this year went, but he does have some thoughts about what he would like to do differently when he is president next year. “I plan on publicizing it a little more. I want to put up more posters all around the school to raise awareness about it,” he said.

Gibert agrees with Brown that this was one of the best years that he has participated in the event. “This was a really great year. The students showed so much support for the groups and everyone had a great time. It’s weird to think that this will be my last Lip Synch.”