Will Felton walked onto the Union Cotillion Ballroom stage Tuesday night to an excited audience of LSU students.
Felton, a biochemistry junior, left the stage at the prompting of a room full of boos and a large broom pushing him off.
Felton’s performance was one of nine other acts performed in the annual “Showtime at the Cotillion,” hosted by LSU’s NAACP.
The show is a mirror of the popular television show, “Showtime at the Apollo,” which airs on Black Entertainment Television. The show’s contestants showcase their talent and are judged by the reaction of the audience.
“Now, if you like the contestants, what are you going to do?” Steve Brockington, a speech communication senior and emcee of the show, asked the audience.
They responded with applause.
“And if you don’t like the contestants, what am I going to hear?” he said.
The audience responded with loud boos.
One by one contestants performed and subjected themselves to the audience’s scrutiny.
For some contestants, the crowd was tough.
Felton was booed for what some audience members perceived as obscenity.
His performance was a rap with the repeating line: “It goes in, out.”
On one line, a mother in the audience covered the ears of her small child and began to boo Felton. The rest of the audience soon joined in.
Barbara Eloi, a marketing sophomore, received a few boo’s but was saved by female audience members.
Eloi sang Mariah Carey’s “Hero.” On one high note, a few men in the back of the audience began to boo her. But the women in the front of the room quickly came to Eloi’s rescue. She left the stage to the sound of applause.
The audience seemed a bit too forgiving to Brockington.
Halfway through the night he prompted them to be more vocal in their support or disapproval.
“Listen y’all,” he said. “Did y’all pay money to get in here? Did y’all pay money to come sit in here and be quiet? Can I just get a boo somewhere?”
But the performance following Brockington’s request was Candace Creecy-the final winner of the competition.
Throughout her act, men and women jumped to their feet, shouted, cheered and even banged the metal chairs to the floor in support of Creecy, a psychology sophomore.
“I was nervous I would mess up,” she said. “But I wasn’t nervous I would be booed.”
Angelle Zachary, a freshman in pre-veterinary medicine, was a finalist in the competition. She also was nervous, but not because she was afraid of being booed off stage.
“It can just be nerve-raking to get up there in front of all of those people,” she said.
The event is NAACP’s biggest fundraiser, and all proceeds will be used to fund NAACP activities like voter registration drives.