Members of Student Senate Participate in Ice Bucket Challenge
The ALS Ice bucket challenge spilled over the Student Senate on Aug. 28.
Grace Harrison, Senate President, and Fanny Motey, Senate Treasurer, took part in the viral challenge at 9:30 a.m. in front of the campus center after being nominated by Hudson Valley President, Drew Matonak three weeks prior to the event. Harrison claims that the decision was made that day to “kick off” the Welcome Back Barbeque which began at 11 a.m.
Harrison added, “It was not 24 hours but we were trying to coordinate it so all of our [executive] board members could participate but we were not able to do that.”
Myasia Colon, Senate Vice President and Samantha Bedell, Senate Secretary were not involved in the challenge on Thursday but according to Harrison, the two executive board members participated in the challenge separately.
On Aug. 15 President Matonak was nominated by former faculty member and department chair Dana Lang Carpentier. Matonak, in a pink dress shirt and jeans accepted the challenge and dumped ice water over his head.
“It shows that Drew is a good sport and it shows that our student senate and director of athletics are great sports as well. They’re contributing to the cause by raising awareness and making donations,” said Dennis Kennedy, Director of Communications and Marketing, “It’s a fun social media challenge that is also supporting a good cause.”
“I thought it was really fun to be involved in the whole nomination process and it was really nice to see ALS receive the following it has from people of all ages,” said Harrison.
Matonak nominated student senate senior officers, his nephew, Don Kelly of the Detroit Tigers and the Director of Athletics, Kristan Pelletier.
Pelletier accepted the challenge on the morning of Aug. 18 and splashed a cooler of ice water over her athletic attire in the athletic training room. Jay Pokines, women’s soccer coach, Billy Obenauer, co-ed cross country coach, Bryan Van Vliet, women’s volleyball coach and all assistant coaches at Hudson Valley were nominated by the athletic director.
On Aug. 21, the Hudson Valley Volleyball team took the challenge in Parking Lot G. Before a bulldozer dumped ice water on the team huddled together including Van Vliet, the men’s football and soccer team were nominated to take the challenge.
On the same date, Obenauer also took part in the trend nominating family members and student runner, Devin McGuirk.
Between July 29 to Aug. 21, $41.8 million donations have been made to the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association, based in Washington. 739,000 new donors have been added to the association to support funding ALS research.
According the ALS Association, the average donation was $46.25, with the greatest donation being a estimated $100,000. Over 1.2 million Facebook videos and 2.2 million Twitter hashtags have been made from July 29 to Aug. 17 for the challenge.