When Gillian Hassert calls her mother, she can’t speak. “Mom?” she manages, then giggles uncontrollably.
“Did you win?” her mother asks. “Use words, Gillian!”
Only minutes before, she was competing in the 2011 Campus Superstar contest, an annual singing competition in the style of American Idol, hosted by and benefitting the Hillel Jewish University Center. More than 150 college students from Western Pennsylvania schools auditioned for a chance to be in the top 10 and win cash prizes; a grand prize of $5,000 would go to the Campus Superstar. In the months leading up to the finals, Carnegie Mellon students dominated the first two rounds of cuts. Five of the 10 finalists ended up coming from the university, including four musical theater majors and Hassert, a junior majoring in vocal performance.
For the finals, Hassert sang “Down With Love,” a big-band standard that showed off her range. The song starts low and jazzy and ends with a crescendo that gave her a chance to belt out a high G. Her rendition earned a raucous round of applause and a standing ovation from the student section of the audience.
After all of the performances, the audience voted for their favorite. Hassert sneaked a look from the stage to see which colored tickets the audience members were tearing from their ballots—each contestant was assigned a color; hers was light blue. But it seemed to her a veritable rainbow in the audience as all 10 contestants had their supporters, making her stomach queasy. It was anyone’s game. As the votes were tallied, the finalists sang a Beatles medley that they prepared the week before. Hassert found it to be a nice distraction from the anxiety of waiting for the results.
Finally, it was time to announce the winners. Carnegie Mellon sophomore Jesse Carrey-Beaver came in third and won $1,000. A University of Pittsburgh student took second. Hassert was both elated and dejected. With each name, she tensed; she desperately wanted to hear her name, but when she didn’t, it meant that she might have won the title. There was only one name left to hear.
A few minutes later, Hassert is in the lobby, phoning her parents, surrounded by several dozen of her friends from campus. After her initial laughing fit, she finally catches her breath.
“Gillian! Did you win?” her mother asks again.
“Yes!” she says, finally. “I won!”
—Shannon Deep (CMU’10, HNZ’11)
