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At the end of HuskyTHON 2008, participants learned that their endless hours of dancing had raised $56,920 to benefit the Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford.

Partying For A Cause

HuskyTHON Raises $50,000 For Children?s Hospital

By: John Bailey

Posted: 2/25/08

Parties are all about the moment. You have a great moment, then another - one after the next, fueled by thumping music, good friends and buffalo wings. You feel supercharged, raw, alive.

And then the moments have passed you by and you have to wake up the next morning and clean up that giant purple stain and who knows how you're going to replace your mom's antique dresser. And you don't feel very alive any more.

But what if you woke up the next morning and, instead of destroying your house, you had raised over $50,000 for sick children?

As it turns out, you feel pretty good.

Hundreds of students gathered in the Greer Field House for HuskyTHON 2008, dancing their way through Saturday night and through to Sunday morning. Sporting colored shirts to denote their status, staff members, volunteers and dancers alternately danced, ate, hung around or participated in the bevy of activity stations donated by SUBOG. And everyone was part of the fund raising operation: every blue-shirted dancer had to raise at least $100 in order to be considered a registered participant, and with over 200 dancers participating, the donation money quickly built up.

"In terms of dancers, this is one of the best years," said Eric Teisch, the marketing director of the event. We had something like 100 last year and we've more than doubled that this year."

And then, with a hurried farewell, Teisch dashed off to one of the two opposing stages set up in the middle of the room, joining the rest of the volunteer staff, the program directors and the pink-shirted Morale team in the hourly "morale dance." The DJ spun a genre-spanning mix of popular dance tunes, and the volunteer staff paired elaborate choreography with each one.

"We keep everyone pepped up - [the dancers] are here all night," said Teresa Ireland, a 6th-semester communications major and one of the Morale crew. "So are we, of course. We're like the cheerleaders for [the event]."

By the time the final morale dance concluded at noon, with raised fists and a last yell of "I will survive," it was clear that the staff had done their job. Though everyone was tired, sleepwalking lazily to their piles of bags and discarded outerwear, the attitude in the room was electric.

"It feels really good," said Chelsea Hagen, a 4th-semester exploratory major representing Kappa Kappa Gamma. Her sorority raised the most money of any organization during the event, and also had the most dancers. "But not just because of all the money we raised. Seeing [our sponsored family] in the morning was really great."

Teams of students representing organizations - mostly Greek organizations, but not entirely - each sponsored a particular family whose child had been treated at the Connecticut Children's Medical Center. The families were present to meet with their sponsoring team, and while they didn't generally stay the whole night, they spent as much time at the Field House as they could during the evening and following morning.

The focus on the families has grown over the years.

"The first year it was clearly geared towards the college students - there were only two or three families," said Pat Ferron, a resident of Smithfield, R.I. whose son was treated at the CCMC. "Now it's maybe 15 or 20. Word spreads through the families. If there's one event you go to, they say, make it [HuskyTHON]."

Aside from family participation, HuskyTHON has been growing rapidly in all areas in the past few years. Louise Ferrone, an 8th-semester economics and human rights major and executive director of HuskyTHON, described changes in leadership and overhauls of the fund raising tools as key to the program's success.

"What really helped was the online fund raising," Ferrone said.

An online fundraising tool allowed students to solicit donations without having to go through the arduous and expensive process of large-scale mailings. More than half the event's donations came from the online tool, noted Bill Mattera, hall director for Northwest Campus and advisor to the program.

In addition, a good 30 to 40 percent of the groups present were non-Greek, which is a substantial increase from years past, Ferrone said.

"It's the philanthropy of the university. One of the other changes [evident] was that it wasn't just Greek life that came. Most of the dance 'thons start with Greek life so you have something to begin with. We've run this event over eight years, but during the past three we've revolutionized it."

The changes to the event have been geared towards boosting the enjoyment level, too.

"We started feeding dancers," Mattera said. "We started having dancers, which we didn't even have three years ago - we just had people that showed up occasionally."

And with luck and effort, the 'thon will only get bigger.

"There's universities like Penn State that have [events] that raise over $6 million," Mattera said. "There's no reason we can't be one of those marathons."

Contact John Bailey at John.C.Bailey@UConn.edu.