Mazzy Jensen of Clinton, Iowa, walked to the front of the Great Room and stood before her 89 fellow cherubs.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi guys!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi!\u201d they shouted back.<\/p>\n
She said she wanted to share her poem to express her gratitude to the cherubs and the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to be quiet, a kind of violent silence,\u201d she read. \u201cThe thing is, I am alive. To not speak was to die, so I opened my mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her act was the second-to-last of Cherubs Got Talent, a Mandatory Fun event with 35 performers and a loud audience.<\/p>\n
The cold open: 10 cherubs performed a \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d-style skit. Colin Jost, played by Carter Heit of Haworth, New Jersey, invited President Donald Trump, played by Owen Zeller of Chicago, on as a guest host. The group even secretly gave certain audience members questions to ask.<\/p>\n
Heit\u2019s favorite part of his script, penned by Zeller, was a joke about Taco Bell lettuce causing explosive diarrhea. (Heit wrote Zeller\u2019s lines.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI really couldn’t hold it together,\u201d Heit said. \u201cI thought it was absolutely hysterical.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the third act, the audience sang \u201cViva la Vida\u201d while Jayen Shah of Princeton, New Jersey, strummed it on his guitar. In dozens of past performances, nobody had sung along.<\/p>\n
For the talent show, he chose the Coldplay hit because of its \u201ccampfire-y\u201d nature.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I think of the song, I think of people sitting around a campfire, sitting around a campfire, enjoying s’mores,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to evoke that vibe for the last week of cherubs to bring us all together.\u201d<\/p>\n
The event was a yes for cherubs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there is a talent show next year, you should definitely do it,\u201d Jensen said. \u201cEverybody will be supportive, and there’s no reason to be afraid to share whatever talent, no matter how small or big or stupid it may seem to you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back at the dorm, journalists performed an \u2018SNL\u2019-style skit and played \u2018Viva la Vida\u2019 on guitar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":339,"featured_media":11290,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[674],"class_list":["post-11557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":674,"user_id":339,"is_guest":0,"slug":"ngo26","display_name":"Alexander Ngo","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/389be44ee8ae4ae683067d5824add3f094334d8266f0a0119e96433cf543ca58?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Ngo","first_name":"Alexander","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/339"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11557"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12776,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11557\/revisions\/12776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11557"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}