After surpassing his $2,000 fundraising goal, Student Union President Jon Marker – as promised – shaved his famous locks at 1 a.m. Sunday, shortly after the halfway mark of the 18-hour marathon.
Marker had spent the past month collecting donations and, in the past week, carried around a large plastic jug collecting money, which totaled between $2,200 and $2,300, he said Sunday.
It all started out as a joke.
“People always say that everyone knows me by my hair, and ‘why don’t you shave it?'” the College of Arts and Sciences junior said. “It wasn’t connected to Dance Marathon before, and then I decided to do it.
“It is one of the causes I care a whole lot about,” he continued. “I want to help out in any way I can.”
Marker, with a rainbow headband holding back his hair, took the stage while Co-Coordinators Christen Donovan and Alison Werner took the ceremonial first snips with scissors to cheers from the crowd.
He was then taken out into the front hall of the SAC, where he put a black garbage bag around his yellow Day of Service Shirt to finish the deed.
Marker’s friends shaved the rest of his head with a barber’s razor set on the lowest setting.
“I chose people that I trust an awful lot,” he said.
After he touched the first strip of his shaved head, he said “it feels creepy,” explaining that his hair had never been shorter than a few inches long.
Marker’s girlfriend, Jess Haskell, shaved the last bits of his head, paying close attention behind the ears. She had never seen him without his trademark do.
“I think it looks better,” the College of Communication senior said afterward. “I have been calling it an ‘end of an era,’ but I was nervous to see it go.”
Marker unveiled his newly shorn head about 20 minutes later to the cheers and applause of the crowd.
“It’s cold, it’s different,” he said.
Although Haskell said she anticipates that he will keep it short for the summer, she thinks he will probably grow it out.
“I doubt this is the last time it will be long,” Marker said.