On the evening of Jan. 11, the Evan N. Stevenson Ballroom in the Taggart Student Center was filled with students ready to participate in Utah State University’s Aux Battles. Students Dee Shumway and Hanna Coburn took the stage to host a night full of music and cheering.
The competition was in a bracket style, pitting student organizations against each other. Event organizers spun a digital wheel of song categories when two teams came on stage to compete. The teams chose songs they thought best represented the category and then played 30 seconds of the song over the ballroom speakers.
After the two teams performed their songs, Coburn used a decibel meter to determine which team had the loudest applause, which determined the winner.
A member of the USUSA Activities Committee — Jaliyah Suggs — said the inspiration for the event came from the riff-off scene in the 2012 movie “Pitch Perfect.”
“Two committees and teams will compete against each other,” Suggs said, “and then the crowd gets to decide which team won.”
The first round was between the HURD and the Student Alumni Association. The category “you are driving on a dirt road — play a honkey tonkey country song” was selected. SAA took the win, eliminating the HURD from the competition.
Next up, USU Student Events lost to the USU Jump Rope Club in the category “eighties ladies — play a song by a female artist from the 80s.”
Big Blue took the stage to compete against the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity with the category “Freddy Mercury has my heart – play a song by Queen.” Blue accepted his loss soon after SigEp performed “We Will Rock You”— getting the whole room to stomp and clap along.
The ROTC won round four — a song performed at a Superbowl halftime — with “Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira against the fraternity Fiji.
The next category was songs by boy bands who are no longer together. The sorority Kappa Delta took down the USU Blue Crew with the song “She Looked So Perfect” by Five Seconds of Summer.
SAA moved up on the bracket after winning once again against sorority Alpha Chi Omega, after performing the theme song from the TV show “The Office.”
SigEp took the win against the Jump Rope Club, bringing the audience back a few years with the theme “middle school edgy phase,” performing Blink 182’s “I Miss You.”
