The Student Union, Students for Camp Heartland and the Inter Fraternity Sorority Council (IFSC) are teaming up to raise money for children infected with AIDS by centralizing all of the Boston University late-night booty-shakers on one dance floor for a 12-hour dance marathon.
The three organizations held a meeting last night, informing the 65 students who attended about the spring event and collecting applications for students interested in being one of the 10 members of the Dance Marathon Committee. Applications for positions are due at 5 p.m. on Monday in the IFSC mailbox located in the Student Activities Office.
The new members will organize the marathon and the theme of the event, which will be, “With the rhythm of your feet, you can help a heart beat.”
“It’s hard to describe,” said IFSC Judicial Chair Sam Sims. “It’s a 12-hour party to celebrate and fundraise for a good cause.”
The marathon, which is slated to take place April 5-6, 2003, will raise money for The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation and Camp Heartland, a camp for children infected with AIDS.
The foundation “is the leading worldwide non-profit organization dedicated to identifying, funding and conducting pediatric HIV/AIDS research,” as well as other diseases, according to the organizations website.
The foundation is expanding its work to developing countries, according to the committee’s director of fundraising, Emily Judd, who worked at Camp Heartland last summer.
“Penn State raised $3 million last year. We want a go at it,” said Dance Marathon Committee Chair and Vice President of Safety Services for the Student Union Remie Ferreira. According to the committee, Pennsylvania State University has raised more than $16 million since the inception of dance fundraising at the university in the 1970s.
“Dance marathons are the largest college fundraiser in the country,” Sims said. “It’s an institution [at Penn State], but we want it to become a tradition here. We’re hoping to get a good response from the community.”
Students for Camp Heartland raised $6,000 last year, “100 percent of which goes to Camp Heartland,” said Dance Committee Chair Dan Addelson.
“Camp Heartland provides children forever affected by the isolation and tragedy of HIV/AIDS the opportunity to experience — sometimes for the first time — the pure joys of being a kid,” according to the Camp Heartland website.
Ferreira said he hoped the dancers will be able to raise money from corporate sponsors as well as their friends and family.
“This even could be absolutely huge, and show that BU students are not apathetic, to put BU on the map,” Ferreira said.
The marathon will not only have dancers, but dance “motivators,” according to Ferreira. The “motivators,” some of which could be celebrities, such as Scott Wolf and Daisy Fuentes, will help cheer people on and remind people of their cause.
The event should draw a “couple of hundred dancers,” according to Ferreira. The Catering Committee of the Dance Marathon will ensure dancers don’t dangerously exhaust themselves during the marathon by providing a healthy selection of food created by a nutritionist.
Although chair members will be occupied with certain duties during the dance, Sims said, “Dancers are the core and heart and core of this.
“I know I’m dancing as much as possible,” Sims said.
Giovanna Loiotile, BU senator for Bay State, said her high school raised $100,000 at a dance marathon for muscular dystrophy. “And we were a small school,” she said.
Addelson, who has been a counselor at Camp Heartland for three years, told the crowd “Camp [Heartland] touched my heart in such a way that it made me want to incorporate it in the rest of my life.”