“Singing has always been there. It’s almost like I was just born with it,” said Eleanor Aldous, 19, a sophomore at George Washington University and this week’s Campus Celebrity.
Aldous, a native of Dallas, Texas, is a member and featured soloist of one of GWU’s esteemed Acapella groups, the Vibes. She was accepted into the group the first semester of her freshman year, in the fall of 2010.
“The reason I wanted to try out for the Vibes was because I saw Ryan Thornton perform at Colonial Inauguration. He sang Beyonce and I just fell in love.”
Aldous is an alto performer in the group, but had never had formal vocal training until the start of this current semester. She instead became involved in music by participating in her church choir as a child. As Aldous got older, she also became heavily involved in sports. She played soccer, basketball, softball, and swimming, but when Aldous began high school, she had to prioritize and narrowed her activities down to basketball and choir. Although Aldous had to leave basketball behind when she started college, the sport engrained in her the importance of maintaining a strong family unit.
“In high school, I had a family in the basketball team. When I came to college, I wanted that family mentality and I get that from the Vibes.”
Aldous is not the only one in her family that has become accustomed to the spot light. Her older sister handles public relations for a record label, her older brother is an aspiring playwright, and her younger brother will be playing D1 basketball in college.
Aside from the Vibes, Aldous has also participated in musical theater with one of GWU’s theater companies, Forbidden Planet Productions. Additionally, Aldous is a member of GWU’s Honors Program and works as a Student Advisor for the program. She was also just accepted into GW’s Alternative Breaks and will be traveling to Honduras to help disadvantaged youth during this upcoming winter break.
In addition to her passion for music, Aldous also shares a great love for women’s rights and is a women’s studies major. She plans to attend law school and aspires to become an international lawyer for women’s issues.
“I’m very passionate about women’s issues, especially ones that are swept under the rug.”
Aldous realized her passion for the subject after witnessing the unfair treatment her mother experienced working as a high-power female attorney. She said that the men that worked with her mother in offices would often treat her as if she was a file clerk rather than an established, trained attorney solely because she was a woman. Aldous hopes to work to eliminate stereotypes such as those and the general inequalities women continue to experience everywhere.
Although Aldous has a clear vision of what she would like to pursue as a career, she cannot predict what is to become of music in her future.
“I don’t know if it will be in a professional way or in a more personal way, but I do know music will always be in my life.”