The IU Dance Marathon announced Monday, Aug 10 the November marathon will be virtual to comply with with IU’s fall guidelines for in-person, IU sponsored events.
“I’m definitely disappointed because I don’t know exactly how it’s going to play out,” IU sophomore Ava Hartman said.
Hartman is on IUDM’s special events committee this year, which organizes the two largest annual fundraising events, the IUDM Gala and the IUDM Golf Outing. This would be her first year on the committee, but she said the golf outing is canceled and the gala will be online.
“I’ve never done the gala before, but I have seen pictures and it’s talked about by older members, and you get to dress up super fancy and walk around the gala and make sure everything’s running smoothly,” Hartman said. “So that’s not happening, which I’m really sad about.”
IUDM is the second-largest student-run philanthropy in the world, according to its website. The organization plans events and raises money year-round for the Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis and has raised over $40 million since its founding in 1991.
The 36-hour dance marathon takes place each November to raise awareness for pediatric care, raise funds and celebrate the fundraising efforts throughout the year. Participants need to meet the fundraising requirement of $550 before dancing at the marathon.
Hartman said she’s worried about lower fundraising totals this year.
Last year Hartman participated in the marathon as a dancer for the first time. She said she raised $1,000 despite having only three months to fundraise as a freshman, which earned her a 24-hour shift at the marathon. She said her favorite part was the line dance, which is taught on-stage by members of the morale committee section by section and everyone dances it at the end of the night.
“My goal, eventually, is to be one of the people up there teaching the line dance, because I think that’s super cool,” Hartman said.
IU junior Emily Plaskett said she was amazed by the scale and impact of the marathon the first time she participated as a freshman.
“It was just so amazing to see that many people all coming together for the cause,” she said.
Last year, IUDM had a total of 3,364 participants and raised $4.2 million.
Each year at the marathon, children, parents and staff from the hospital are invited on-stage to share their stories with the crowd. Plaskett said this builds a great connection with the hospital. To Plaskett, the marathon is a culmination of a year’s effort by committee members and dancers and a celebration of what Riley Hospital for Children and IUDM do for children.
“At the marathon, the focus is: everything is for the kids,” she said.
“You get the sense of ‘we are the ones making that personal impact, and we are the ones creating that change,'” junior Joshua Mussell said. He said he thought IUDM was probably going to be virtual this year because of the sheer number of people at the event. Nonetheless, he feels bad for the seniors who will miss out on their last marathon.
“I think it’s still going to be a great time,” he said. “It’s just going to be a lot different.”
To IU senior Max Eslava, IUDM is personal. He said dancing at the marathon and being involved with his committee pushed him out of his shell to meet more people and become more extroverted than he used to be. IUDM, he said, made strangers less strange, as they are all connected with the common purpose of helping the kids.
Speaking of the challenges the organization will face this year, he said the key would be to keep motivation high among its members, and members need to remember why they’re part of this group.
“Maybe the format has changed in the way they’re going to experience it the first time or the last time or whatever it will be,” he said, “but they need to remember at the end of the day they made a change that they may not be able to see at the moment, but other families and other children will be able to experience because of what they did.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story spelled a student's name incorrectly. The IDS regrets this error.
