It was Saturday, May 2, 2020, and the once-packed Mullins Center was abandoned. Outside the empty stadium, DJ Kenney, then a UMass junior and actuarial sciences and economics double major, danced a simple choreographed routine with three friends to a remix of blaring pop music in the bright sun.
In past years, the UMass For the Kids’ Dance Marathon has been held inside the Mullins Center, attracting packed crowds throughout the 12-hour event. But a month and a half after most UMass students had been sent home for the pandemic, the 2020 marathon had gone fully remote.
About 900 UMass students tuned in throughout the day, free to log on and off as they pleased. Kim Manning, then a sophomore and “holistic wellness in business” major (a self-directed major), logged on from her Amherst house, where she had been staying with friends. Kim, FTK’s director of hospitality, had spent the year planning an in-person Dance Marathon. In March she canceled food orders and decorations and got to work planning the virtual event, which consisted of online Zumba classes, yoga, speeches and a livestreamed montage of morale-boosting dancers, including DJ and his friends.
Despite the virtual change, DJ found the virtual marathon uplifting. “I was happy because it was my first time back at school since the pandemic started. I was channeling the feeling of being at Dance Marathon,” he said.
There are 273 registered student organizations at UMass, known colloquially as RSOs. Of these, UMass for The Kids is the largest student-run philanthropic organization on campus, with 183 members. Members are split into two committees: the steering committee, which plans the logistics of events and fundraising, and the morale committee, which boosts energy during events.
FTK fundraises for Baystate Children’s Hospital in Springfield, having raised more than $1 million over the past 10 years. Its dance marathon is one of the hospital’s largest annual fundraising events.
DJ began fall 2020 as president of FTK, daunted by the challenge of his new role but hopeful that life on campus would be more normal by spring. That didn’t happen, as a year into the pandemic, student groups, FTK included, are still operating virtually.
On Tuesday nights at 8, Kim, now the director of stewardship, logs on to the steering committee’s weekly Zoom meeting, where chit-chat and bonding can be hard. One night, guest Kristen Dedrick, the mother of a child treated at Baystate Children’s Hospital, led the group, asking each student to share why they participate in the Dance Marathon. Kim listened as her peers shared how their personal connections to childhood cancer inspired them to become involved with FTK. These stories resonated, and Kim left the meeting feeling closer to her fellow members.
Before the pandemic, FTK would raise money for Baystate by setting up tables in the Campus Center, selling tickets to fundraisers at LIT Amherst, or asking a local restaurant to donate. With in-person fundraising unsafe and local restaurants feeling the pandemic’s economic burden, FTK had to find new ways to raise money.
“One way we have tried to instate fundraising is through friendly competition,” DJ said.
The annual March Madness competition, where RSOs compete against each other to raise the most money, is one of FTK’s biggest fundraising pushes. Sororities and fraternities are especially active. But this year FTK raised $16,302 during March Madness, less than half what they raised last year.
This spring, the Mullins Center is no longer abandoned. Students pour in and out each day, not attending sporting events or the Dance Marathon but instead getting tested for COVID-19.