DeKALB | Northern’s Got Talent exposed unique performance works from the student body Thursday evening.

The Campus Activity Board hosted its first Northern’s Got Talent competition in the Carl Sandburg Auditorium and was filled with about 200 students. Special guests in the audience were from the “Talented Tenth” an NIU mentoring programming that houses high school students interested in attending NIU for the weekend.

The show included various acts such as singers, spoken word artists and even a professional yo-yoer.

Alesha Etheridge, senior corporate communications major, said she wanted the campus to see a variety of talents it sometimes doesn’t get to see.

“The idea for this event was originally from one of my committee members last year,” Etheridge said. “NIU usually only has shows that caters dance and our goal for this show was to show that NIU has so much more talent to offer.

After 10 acts performed, junior chemistry major Akira Cavin eared a first-place ribbon from the competition and a goodie bag full of additional prizes and apparel from CAB. Cavin performed a piece entitled, “Ugly Black Woman.”

She said she’d written the poem after watching an episode of the BET series “Being Mary Jane” where the main character Mary Jane, played by actress Gabrielle Union, was called an ugly black woman.

“I was inspired to write this based off of the show and the spark of the black lives matter movement,” Cavin said “My family personally have dealt with police brutality, and I wanted that to be represented in my writing.”

Senior kinesiology major Anthony Gary-Warren said he thinks this event is beneficial to campus.

“Northern’s Got Talent shows how diverse our campus really is,” Warren. “I think we should all come together for events like this more often.”