Open mic night is an event hosted roughly every other Tuesday at the M-Shop in the Memorial Union to allow students to perform whatever type of art they enjoy.

The show is hosted by the Student Union Board (SUB). SUB is a student-run organization that puts on events for students all throughout the school year.

A member of the board, Izzy Emmert, spoke about her experience on the team. 

“I wanted to join the Student Union Board to be more involved on campus and kind of give back to the students,” Emmert said.

Some of the other events that you might recognize that SUB hosts are comedy shows, music concerts, Cyclone Cinema, ISU AfterDark, and more.

Open mic nights are set up to be relaxing, judgement-free nights where students can come to the M-Shop and perform any type of projects that they have been working on that fit the set of rules.

The rules include: 

• Solo performers and/or simple set-ups only.
• Artists must be ISU students.
• Artists must be on-site at 8 p.m. and present through their performance.
• Artists must limit their performance to 10 minutes.
• The material must be prepared, and artists must remain on stage throughout their performance.

On Tuesday, there were many students that wanted to express themselves with their creativity in front of the student audience.

Students explained why they enjoy performing and coming to open mic nights.

Harry Kizer, a freshman art student, and Micah Vera, a sophomore graphic design student, both prepared songs for open mic night. Kizer performed the song Tangled Up In Blue by Bob Dylan and Vera performed an original song.

“Being able to see all the cool stuff that people do where you otherwise wouldn’t is something I think is really cool,” Kizer said when asked why he would recommend students attend open mic night.

“It gives people the opportunity to showcase passions in a very low pressure environment with a lot of people that don’t have incredibly high standards,” Vera said. “You can just kind of play for your free will.”

A total of 16 students performed at open mic night Tuesday, with 3 acts being stand-up comedy and 13 being musical performances, with 2 of the musical acts being only instrumental and 2 being original rap songs.

Some upcoming events that SUB will be hosting include Cyclone Cinema showing the movie Ballerina from Thursday to Sunday, a Weary Ramblers concert in the M-Shop on Thursday and ISU AfterDark on Friday.

For more SUB events or information on how to join the Student Union Board, you can visit their website.