At the beginning of September, I, a wide-eyed freshman looking for his place in a new environment, tried to follow my one true passion: a cappella singing. I auditioned for every single a cappella group that Princeton has to offer: The Tigertones, Roaring 20, The Nassoons, The Wildcats… all of them. But the experience I expected to be so fulfilling turned out to be nothing short of appalling. Not one of the groups gave me so much as a callback. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because of blatant and unabashed discrimination.
Whereas the members ogled over auditioners who happened to have “objectively beautiful voices,” I was ignored, scorned, and rejected simply because my voice sounds like the combination of a dry heave and the cry of a humpback whale. It is not my fault a newborn puppy dies every time I try to carry a tune. I was born this way. This is who I am. And if the high and mighty Kindred Spirits want to overlook me because an angel literally fell from the sky and crashed through the ceiling during my audition, and the pompous Nassoons can’t even give me a shot because my voice involuntarily fluctuates between the high squeal of a dog whistle and the loud blast of a fog horn, then I want no part of any of these disgusting, superficial institutions.
I bring this case to the community’s attention not in some pathetic attempt to force my way into these close-minded clubs, but with the hope that it will focus the campus’ attention on this oft neglected issue and one day change the exclusive attitude of the Princeton a cappella community. Much like the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I too have a dream. I dream that one day the men whose voices cure childhood leukemia and the men whose paltry attempts at singing make an average person beg for the Almighty Zeus to strike him/her down can walk hand in hand to Blair Arch and inconvenience anyone trying to get to the U-Store.
I say it’s about time we end discrimination once and for all on this campus, and give a fair chance those, like me, who were born into less fortunate circumstances than others.
Signed,
C. Worthington Moneybags IV
– EJK ’17.
