Students can stay “Up til Dawn” starting Friday night as a way to raise money for St. Jude’s Children Hospital. 

“Up till Dawn” is hosted by Epsilon Sigma Alpha and starts at 11:30 p.m. Friday in McAfee Gym with check in and from there participants will stay up until 6 a.m. Saturday. 

Maddie Plesnicar, a junior science education and psychology major and logistics director for the event, said over 50 students will be in attendance and in their own teams but, signing up last minute is accepted. 

The event is free for students to attend but when participants check-in they will be given a link to the fundraising site for St. Jude and asked to share that link on their social media platforms to ask for donations to help reach the $33,000 goal.

Plesnicar and Hannah Tauscher, a senior biological sciences major, said a total of $9,139 was raised so far thanks to several teams who signed up before the event.

There are a total of 15 teams attending the event with names like Stevo 7, Delta Chi and EIU UTD, which is the team that consists of the executive board members who helped plan the event. 

Each of the teams helped raise money for the cause and EIU UTD raised the most money with $2,144. 

Plesnicar and Tauscher said they hope to raise $10,000 during the event.

“Students can come and register and through the night they can help fund raise. They’ll have their own personal link where people can donate,” Tauscher said. “They can show up, play games with us and have fun and they can get a t-shirt if they have raise $100, but five bucks goes along way.”

As for how students will stay up all night, Plesnicar said students will be offered free food donated by Jimmy Johns and Dominos as well as coffee donated by Starbucks. 

“Charleston is great about donating things,” Plesnicar said.  

She also said students can bring their own devices such as their cell phones or whatever they want to help keep them awake. 

Tauscher said participants will play “old gym games” as a way to keep students awake. 

“We have a lot going on and we are going to play the old gym games that we use to play growing up. We are playing kick ball, knock out, jeopardy, four square and more,” Tauscher said. 

St. Jude pays expensive hospital bills so families will not have to, plus they provided special doctors for rare diseases and public donations have paid for the research.

Tauscher said she thinks St. Jude’s is amazing because they do so much for families who are going through these situations. 

“They do everything for the families and everything is paid for and every person that donates helps a child,” Tauscher said. “$2.6 million is raised every day and you will never know until you go there (St. Jude’s Hospital) and witness it for yourself. It’s beautiful.”

For more information about donating visit: http://fundraising.stjude.org/site/TR/UTD/UTD?pg=entry&fr_id=92516.

Dee Luter can be reached at 581-2812 or dsluter@eiu.edu.