Dance marathons a growing sensation

Established in 2002, UCLA’s Dance Marathon has become the largest student philanthropic event on the West Coast, with this year’s event attracting about 5,000 participants.

Like UCLA, many schools have established Dance Marathon on their campuses in the last decade, aided by new technology and an increasing awareness of global issues among young people.

There are currently more than 100 universities supporting their local children’s hospitals through Children’s Miracle Network Dance Marathon, according to the organization’s Web site.

Additional universities, including UCLA, hold dance marathons in support of other independent organizations.

Uma Mehta, senior development manager for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, which is the primary beneficiary of UCLA’s Dance Marathon, has seen the impact of campus dance marathons expand widely since 1999.

Currently, the foundation is aided by 11 or 12 college dance marathons, which raise between $500,000 to $600,000 dollars each year for the organization, Mehta said.

The Internet is one important factor in the increasing popularity of campus dance marathons.

Many universities, including UCLA, now have Web sites where donors can give money directly to specific dancers online, which is easier and more efficient for students than phone calls and letter-writing.

The Internet also makes it easier for students to learn about events held at other schools.

“College students are at the forefront of technology, which makes it easier for things to catch on,” Mehta said.

Mehta also attributed the recent increase in dance marathons to a heightened sense of social responsibility among young people.

“The generation that has popped up in the last five to 10 years is much more socially aware,” she said.

This is particularly relevant when it comes to HIV/AIDS, which students who are in college now have grown up hearing about, Mehta said.

“There is not one single college student that knows a life without this disease,” she added.

After attending UCLA’s Dance Marathon in 2007, Jun Wang, then a junior in high school, was inspired to start a dance marathon at his own school.

In his senior year at Edison High School, Wang organized a dance marathon for all of the schools in the Huntington Beach Union High School District.

His efforts ended up raising $13,000 for the Glaser Foundation.

“It’s something that you can do with your friends at the same time as fighting for a cause,” Wang said, now a member of the planning committee for Dance Marathon at UC Irvine.

Like Wang, students from high schools and colleges across the nation have worked to establish dance marathons at their own schools in recent years.

“Dance Marathon lets you cross those normal divisions that exist on college campuses. … We’re proud of how unifying it is,” said Katie Ressmeyer, a student at Northwestern and a publicity spokeswoman for the event.

Dance Marathon is now in its 35th year at Northwestern University, and the event pulls in members from all areas of campus as well as many members of the local community who have become familiar with its cause, Ressmeyer said.

Judah Johns, chairperson of Dance Marathon of the University of Houston, said that the university held its first dance marathon last year.

After being approached by Texas Children’s Hospital to start a dance marathon, students began hearing about other schools in the state that were holding marathons, such as the University of Texas and Texas Woman’s University, which “fueled the fire” for students at University of Houston to establish one of their own, he added.

Word of the event’s success spread quickly after the school’s first dance marathon, and the second annual event, held earlier this month, has doubled in almost every aspect, increasing from around 100 dancers to more than 200.

“It’s a fun activity with great entertainment and a great cause,” Johns said of the event’s quick success.

Johns also said the popularity of dance marathon on college campuses is closely related to the fact that almost all dance marathons fund children’s causes.

“People get hooked on helping little kids,” he said, “It’s very easy to say yes.”

Though dance marathons were held intermittently in the past 30 years at the University of Pittsburgh, the school firmly established an annual event four years ago.

Peter Hammerle, co-head of the committee responsible for organizing the event, said that Pittsburgh’s Dance Marathon looked to Pennsylvania State University’s Dance Marathon, the first to be established and the largest on the East Coast, to get ideas for their own.

In turn, he added, the University of Pittsburgh’s committee provided information to Rutgers when they started their own dance marathon last year.

While he recognized the importance of looking to other schools for inspiration and ideas in starting Dance Marathon, Hammerle also said it was important to “play off other campuses but tailor to your own campus.”

Hammerle said the Dance Marathon committee made the event unique to the University of Pittsburgh by inviting local DJs and athletes that students could get excited about.

“Our campus was really ready for a big event like this, almost needed it,” Hammerle said.

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