Texas Tech’s Student Government Association Graduate Vice President Team is hosting “Tech’s Got Talent”. The talent show will be held on April 16 from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Raider Commons Plaza in the Student Union Building.
Graduate Vice President Charles Ramey II (Photo provided by Charles Ramey II)
Charles Ramey II–graduate student, doctoral candidate, and SGA’s graduate vice president–said the idea behind the event started with students and what they would be interested in seeing.
“These ideas started popping up like, ‘well, we like music, we like performances, we want to sing, we want to dance,’” Ramey said.
Ramey attributed the idea for the name of the event to one of his fellow colleagues.
“I got to give credit to Nery Lira,” Ramey said with a smile. “She was like, ‘Why don’t we call it ‘Tech’s Got Talent’?’ and it started to evolve.”
Junia Lee–freshman business management, pre-medicine major, and SGA intern to the graduate vice president–said they wanted this event to highlight Tech students diversity and uniqueness.
Lee spoke about why this event was developed.
“Just to showcase all the different kinds of talents that are on campus, and kind of just hint that everyone is unique in some way, and bring out people who weren’t in the school of music,” she said.
Freshman SGA Intern to the Graduate Vice President Junia Lee (Photo provided by Junia Lee)
Garrett Franks, a junior music education major and SGA’s deputy Chief of Staff, explained that the driving point for this event is mental wellness, and it will allow everyone to showcase their talents rather than compete for a prize.
“It’s basically just the talent show; we have no competition about it just because the main aspect about it is mental wellness, so we don’t want to make it a competition,” Franks said. “It’s just something that they can come and perform for their friends and family that come to watch in the Plaza and just enjoy themselves.”
Lee said that in efforts of trying to get all Tech students to enjoy this event, the graduate team is working to get the College of Media and Communications to livestream the event so everyone can feel included.
“We have students who are remote learning, and who are not on campus, and we want them to enjoy it as well,” Lee said. “We did choose a date where the baseball game isn’t at home so people can also enjoy it while listening to stats, too.”
Ramey said SGA is about welcoming everybody, and he hopes this event will do that.
“The pandemic really shut a lot of things down but one component that we really wanted to make sure that everyone understood was that SGA is about the student body,” Ramey said. “What better way to do that than by promoting the talent we have right here, at our very campus.”
Lee explained that navigating free time during the pandemic has opened doors for students to discover new talents.
“This pandemic has brought a lot of light and gave a lot of courage to people to explore different talents,” Lee said. “We want to tell people that being a part of this campus doesn’t shut you out from different opportunities, and Texas Tech has a lot of opportunities for the students.”
SGA’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Garrett Franks (Photo provided by Garrett Franks)
Franks said he hopes that “Tech’s Got Talent” will provide students with hope and light the way into normality as the pandemic starts to end.
“I know so many people on this campus that have talents that they don’t get to share with others,” Franks said. “I just think that this event would be allowing them to exhibit those specific talents that they have with their friends and family just so they can have some hope going into the future.”
Ramey said the graduate vice president team hopes that students recognize how valued and appreciated they are through this event.
“These types of exposures show the gamut of what you’re capable of doing,” Ramey said. “We want students to feel valued. Going to college, going to grad school is a valuable experience.”
For more information on “Tech’s Got Talent”, visit www.ttu.sga.edu.
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