It’s signup time for Simpson College’s All College Sing and this year an additional grand prize has been added.

“[T]his year, there is a $250 grand prize, which is not usually the case,” junior Brandon Louis said.

Louis is president and director of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the music fraternity that hosts the event.

Previous winners have only received a trophy and no monetary prize.

“You can reuse a trophy, but you can’t really reuse $250,” said Louis. “It’s just kind of something that’s pretty cool.”

Louis said adding a financial incentive to All College Sing was to bring more competition to participators and more involvement.

All College Sing has transitioned from something traditional to something a lot more fun for current generations, according to Louis.

“Originally [All College Sing] started off with the different groups on campus putting together singing groups and they would sing chorale music,” Louis said. “They would be singing renaissance pieces, early modern pieces and nowadays it’s turned more into putting together pop music.”

Creativity is always showcased at this event.

“You’ll have people with electric guitars and drum sets,” Louis said. “You’ll have people with one guitarist and then a bunch of singers. You could even use a boom box, iPad or an iPod – anything like that to play the music on.”

Audience turnout last year was successful, but this year should be better, Louis says.

“Last year the turnout was pretty good,” Louis said. “We had about half of Great Hall filled. It was mainly due to it being May Term. The year before, the turnout was awful because we had to change the date a bunch of times and the person who was hosting it didn’t do a good job with communicating with the campus, but in the years before that, it was a very, very big event. A lot of groups would sign up and [All College Sing] would be a few hours long. It was heavily attended and there was a lot of participation.”

Louis hopes for a better turnout with more detailed emails to the campus and improved communication with interested students.

Every participating group needs a minimum of five people, but groups can extend beyond that amount. Lambda Chi Alpha won All College Sing last school year, and their group had 20 participants.

In the past, there has been a lack of interest, but this year should be different.

“With the movie Pitch Perfect coming out, I think we are going to get more people that are interested in one, showing up to watch and two, possibly partaking [in the event],” said Louis.

Everyone at Simpson is welcome to join All College Sing.