“If you try to please all, you please none.” – Aesop
I hear this every year: “It’s not fair.” From students. From parents. And if we’re honest, from everyone. Heck, even I’ve said it! And I get it. This time of year, coming out of March Madness, along with choir festivals and show choir contests, conversations surrounding fairness happen more and more.
What Is Fair?
Merriam-Webster defines fairness as a “lack of favoritism toward one side or another.” In the competitive arts, however, I’ve come to understand it a little differently:
Fair doesn’t mean being identical. It means being intentional.
Fairness at HOA
At Heart of America, one of our core values is to do the right thing. That includes how we treat every group that walks into our events. Through tools like our Director Portal, we work to communicate clearly. We build diverse panels with experience across choral music, choreography and instrumental performance. We respect the differences in style and expectations from programs across the country.
Is it perfect? No. But it is intentional.
Subjectivity Allows for Differences
In the competitive arts, we’re not measuring something objective like time or distance. We’re evaluating performance, interpretation and communication. No two panels will ever see things exactly the same way. Scores will never be identical. That’s not a flaw – that’s the nature of what we do.
What Can You Do?
Of course, there are aspects no one can control, but there are things you can. You control how you:
- Define success in your program
- Prepare your students in rehearsal
- Have your program represent your school and community
- Respond when things don’t go your way
Your Students Are Listening
I remember standing with my group after more than one awards ceremony where the results didn’t go our way. You can feel it immediately: the heartbreak, confusion and frustration. In that moment, what you say next matters more than anything that just happened on stage.
That’s the moment where you decide what this experience becomes: Do we focus on what we didn’t get? Or do we remind them of what we did do?
How Do You Measure Success?
For me, in both the good years and the hard ones, success is always measured by improvement. Did we do everything we could to get better, as students, performers and as a performance family? Did we take the feedback given and apply it? Were we good to ourselves and to each other? Did we represent who we are?
When those answers are yes, the results become part of the journey, not the definition of it. Students learn from how we handle the results. They can use that example as a model for how to respond in their own lives, or how not to. That’s a far bigger lesson than any number, score, medallion, trophy or placement.
Shifting Focus
Perfect fairness in the arts does not exist. Focusing solely on the results, whether they go your way or not, doesn’t move your program forward. What it does is being intentional about how you define success. When you do that, competition becomes less about “beating” another group and more about lifting each up, both on and offstage.