Up 'til Dawn

I'm sure by now that you have seen events and promotions for Up 'til Dawn. Until this year I just thought that was a group that held "lock-ins" or something that made people stay up all night for the fun of it. Boy was I wrong.

Up 'til Dawn is a student-led, student-run, philanthropic program hosted by colleges and universities nationwide to raise funds for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

I spoke with Samantha Walker, who is on the PR/Marketing Chair for Up 'til Dawn. "Any students can be involved within the Executive Board. The teams can be any students as well. Usually other student orgs will create a team, a teams is compose of no more than 6 people, and once they have registered and payed their $5 they are with Up 'til Dawn. With that being said we would love to have as many teams as possible, just to keep in mind there can only be six members and usually one person serves as a team captain. What happens most of the time is that many student orgs have more than one team."

To raise money they hold fundraisers. They recently gave out Applebees flyers for 15% of the order to benefit St. Jude. November 9th they are holding an All Teams Meeting where all of the teams come to the Student Union Ballroom to write out letters to friends and family to help raise money.

Samantha told me about what she enjoys most about being involved. "My favorite part is just helping the kids. This sounds corny but just knowing that I have made some sort of significance in their lives is awesome. I'm Early Childhood Ed, I wanted to do pediatrics but when I volunteered at Akron Children's I could not handle kids dying, so this way I'm still trying to make a difference."

If you would like to get involved you can contact Samantha Walker at slw64@zips.uakron.edu.