Students raise $2,700 for Pediatric AIDS research in 12-hour dance

Holy Cross students put on their dancing shoes last weekend — all for a good cause.

From 8 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 2 until 8 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 3, nearly 200 students cut a rug in the Hogan Ballroom in an event titled “Dance for a Cure.” More than $2,700 was raised, all of which is going to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

“We asked for a minimum donation of $10 but most students donated more than the minimum,” says Michelle Arata ’09, a biology major with a premedical concentration and captain of the Holy Cross Ballroom Dance Team.

The idea for the event started in the summer when Arata was working as a research student with Ann Sheehy, assistant professor of biology. HIV and AIDS is a topic of great interest for the student-professor team.

Sheehy’s lab work focuses on understanding the function of APOBEC3G, an anti-HIV protein that humans express in their immune cells. HIV essentially quashes the protein and Sheehy and Arata are trying to figure out how to help APOBEC3G escape this viral sledgehammer. “We are hoping to eventually publish Michelle’s work,” says Sheehy.

“I mentioned trying to put together a dance marathon a month before she got a random e-mail from another university asking whether Holy Cross might be interested in hosting such a benefit for the Glaser Foundation. The idea just grew from there,” says Sheehy, who loves to dance.

Says Arata: “The idea had been brought to my attention by two separate parties. It was just meant to be. I knew it was something that I was meant to run.”

In addition to the ballroom team, seven other student organizations helped Arata make the dance a success by spreading the news across campus: American Medical Student Association, Biology Society, Bishop Healy Multicultural Society, Campus Activities Board, Dance Ensemble, the Delilah’s, and Latin American Student Organization. She hopes the event will become an annual tradition at the College.

A DJ kept music spinning non-stop into the morning. Incentives kept participants motivated — and moving — throughout the night. Entertainment was served up every hour on the hour by The Delilah’s, Alex Spanos and the Blackouts (a campus band), the Ballroom Dance team, and the Dance Ensemble.

Ballroom dance representatives from Clark University, the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute also participated. Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J., president of Holy Cross, and Mark Freeman, professor of psychology and dean of the class of 2011, among other faculty members, stopped by.

There was plenty of food available throughout the night, and all remaining participants were treated to a full buffet breakfast in the morning.

Although she served as faculty advisor for the event, Sheehy says the students should take most of the credit for the success of the event.

“This is a phenomenal group of students who put together an event that not only reflects the mission of the College, but the remarkable ability of our young people to stand in solidarity with those who are marginalized and lack a voice,” says Sheehy.