Dancing at a club for three hours is nothing compared to Ohio State’s Buckeyethon, the annual festival and fundraiser that charges participants with staying on their feet for the entire 14 hours of the event.
The 447 people that attended Sunday’s proceedings were able to raise more than $100,000 for Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus.
“This is the first year we’ve broken $100,000 so it’s pretty exciting,” said Jaclyn Peters, residence hall liaison for this year’s event. The money raised at Buckeyethon will go toward equipment and treatment costs at the hospital.
“Everything we do revolves around the kids,” Peters said. Children and families that have been treated at the hospital were present during the event.
“It’s really great because some of them have been walking around and they’ve had people who have been helped because of the money we’ve raised,” said Chris Hawley, a second-year in political science and English.
Hawley’s fraternity, Alpha Tau Omega, raised money for Buckeyethon through the Noodles & Company restaurant, with a portion of the eatery’s earnings in a certain period of time going to the cause.
The fundraiser, held in the Tom W. Davis Special Events Gym on the bottom floor of the RPAC, began at noon Saturday and lasted until 2 a.m. Sunday. Billed as a dance marathon, the event featured a stage and “dance floor” in a large portion of the gym, but also had other sections set aside for separate activities.
The 14 hours that encompass Buckeyethon are a paltry commitment compared to the fundraisers put on by other institutions.
“Other schools like Penn State do theirs for 48 hours, so people can’t really complain,” said Peters. “We have one of the shortest dance marathons.”
Throughout the course of the day and night, dancers could participate in games of cornhole, pingpong, basketball or dodgeball, jump around in a Moonbounce, or play board games and eat on high tables specifically designed for standing people.
Each participant was broken into color-marked teams at the beginning of the event and the teams were led by “morale leaders” such as Emily Walker, a fourth-year in communication, who was part of the red team at Buckeyethon.
“We’re there to keep people pumped up, even when they’re so tired that they want to leave,” Walker said.
The eight colors that designated teams were chosen to represent upbeat emotions. Brown and gray were two of the colors not present at the event, but there was a team marked by the color black.
“They have to be happy colors,” Walker said. “Even our black is a happy black.”
An additional fundraiser was planned for the weeks before Buckeyethon that would have added to the record amount of money raised Sunday. Three auditions for BuckeyeIdol, a talent competition also designed to raise money for the Children’s Hospital, were scheduled for the different sections of student housing on campus.
The north- and south-campus auditions were canceled due to weather, however, and no contestants arrived for the west-campus competition. The winner from each event would have performed during the later stages of Buckeyethon.
