Concert benifits Middle Way House

Crowds gathered Saturday in the Collins Living-Learning Center to see five bands perform a benefit show for the Middle Way House, an organization offering support to victims of sexual and domestic violence.

The bands — Osteoferocious, Stagnant Pools, Apache Dropout, Circuit des Yeux and the Joel Tucker Jazz-tet — all performed for free. Local restaurant wingsXtreme provided food while donations of toiletries and clothing items were encouraged at the door.

“Middle Way House is always needing donations,” said sophomore Lidia Karpinski, a Collins resident assistant and head organizer of the event. “I’m good friends with Stagnant Pools and Circuit des Yeux, so I asked them to perform, and then by word of mouth we got more bands. We also got a lot of support from people at Collins.”

Karpinski said she chose the Middle Way House because Residential Programs and Services assigned the organization to Collins this year as part of a new program in which all campus residencies “adopt” a Bloomington non-profit organization. The program was implemented to encourage student involvement in non-profit organizations around the community.

“The Middle Way House is ours,” said senior Matt Ubrig, another Collins RA and assistant organizer of the concert. “We’ve been working with them for quite some time, but I don’t think we’ve ever put on any event to give them such large-scale help before.”

Karpinski said the event, which she estimated drew about 150 people, will be worth putting on again in the future.

“I thank everyone for coming out to support Middle Way,” she said. “Especially all the bands who came and played and helped advertise. We plan to do it all again next year and make it bigger and better.”