Edited by: Sharayu Shejale
Heard the term ‘LitSoc’ being thrown around a little too frequently? Been dragged by your hostel LitSec to SAC last week and don’t know why? Confused by the points, the clubs, the hostel rivalries, and wondering how to get people to explain all of it? Fear not! This article will answer all these questions and more. So, let’s begin the class.
Lit Socks, wut?
LitSoc is IITM’s annual series of inter-hostel cultural competition. LitSoc stands for Literary Society. In its formative years, it started with only literary competitions, but with time, it grew bigger and brought under its wings multiple cultural competitions. But since people had come to associate ‘LitSoc’ with this year-long competition, the name stuck.
Today, LitSoc events are conducted by the clubs that come under ‘Sangam’. For the uninitiated, Sangam is the agglomeration of insti’s cultural clubs. Each club is in charge of conducting their respective LitSoc events.
Each club conducts certain events which are ‘LitSoc events’. You can check your smail for updates (and spam!) about these events. The winners and runner ups of each event get awarded a certain number of points. These points get added to the LitSoc points tally of the hostel of the winner(s). Some events also have points for simply participating! At the end of the year, the LitSoc points earned by each hostel are compared and the hostel with the most number of points wins the LitSoc Shield, the title of ‘LitSoc Champion’ and most importantly, bragging rights.
Things to Watch Out For
- ‘LitSoc Days of the Week’: While LitSoc events happen throughout the year, this semester, the events are scheduled to happen in the ‘LitSoc Days of the Week’ format, i.e, they will be held every Wednesday and Thursday.
- Distribution of Events: A little over 40 LitSoc events are planned this year.
- More events planned in the odd semester as compared to the even semester.
- Most individual events are slotted to happen in the odd semester, while more group events are planned in the even semester.
- The MVP Award: This year, the students who contribute most LitSoc points are to be awarded the Most Valuable Player Award. There are different categories of this award like a hostel LitSoc MVP, year-wise MVP and category-wise MVP. The winners of these awards will be felicitated with medals. To make sure that the counting of points for awarding of MVPs is fair, the organizing team has come up with a normalization criteria. You can read more about this, the points split-up and rules for each event in the LitSoc Rulebook.
- Professional Judges: Most of the events that are planned for LitSoc bring in professional judges from outside. There have been multiple occasions in the past of judges were so impressed with certain students’ performances that they have been given opportunities to perform their piece in popular shows happening elsewhere in Chennai.
What’s Lit?
LitSoc is not all about showing the world the talent you already have. It is also about developing new skills and talents. There have been many instances of people having come to insti being a novice at a certain skill and having gotten really good at it by the end of their stay here just by participating in LitSoc and other Sangam events regularly.
But ultimately, what makes LitSoc so special is the bond that you develop with your fellow hostel-mates when you participate in events. In some of the group events like Queen of Sheba and LitSoc Treasure Hunt, the whole hostel can participate. These events require a lot of intra-hostel coordination and cooperation. You may not even have known someone a couple of days before the event, but on the day the event’s results are announced, you will find yourself either celebrating with them or crying on their shoulder. Such is the power of LitSoc. It is truly the ‘hostel feels’ that breathe life into LitSoc.
Useful Links
You can have a look at the schedule of events on the LitSoc Calendar.
All the rules for hostels and participants can be found in the LitSoc Rulebook.
Check for updates at Live LitSoc Points Table and at the Sangam Page for Live Updates.
