Chico State joined the ranks of those who have taken on the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Monday afternoon. Not only did the school create a social event for students and faculty to participate in simultaneously, they became the first college to take the challenge and rally support for the cause.
AS President Taylor Herren, agriculture graduate student, gave some insight to how the event was initially conceived.
“President Zing and myself were both challenged,” she said. “So instead of just us two doing it, we thought it’d be cool to challenge the school.”
In turn, the school accepted the challenge.
Numerous students lined up at the donation tables upon entering the Wildcat Recreation Center and then proceeded to gather at the pool where the challenge was to take place.
There have been many different versions of the challenge as it spread through social media like wildfire.
Chico State’s twist on the challenge was to have participants jump into the WREC pool instead of pouring water and ice over every individual head in effort to refrain from wasting gallons of water.
“We [knew] that we weren’t going to get hundreds of buckets of water. There [was] no way since the campus is sustainable,” Herren said. “We [decided] to use our pool.”
The idea of pouring ice into the pool water was toyed with, but the notion of wasting so much water was a concern.
“The shock value is there, but putting ice in the pool doesn’t make a difference in how much money and awareness we could raise,” Herren said. “The purpose of the campaign is to do that and whether or not we have ice or buckets doesn’t really make a difference.”
This way the school rallied support for ALS and also gave a reminder of the serious drought California is currently facing.
Cammi Carter, senior communication design major, was pleased with the idea of jumping into the pool instead of using buckets of ice water.
“I think it’s way more sustainable,” she said. “And it’s better since California is in a drought.”
Like Carter, Jessica Moreno, senior bilingual studies major, liked the idea of bringing awareness to the drought as well as ALS.
“I think it’s cool that were making a statement [about the drought],” she said.
Herren was pleased with raising almost $400 for the cause and how the event turned out overall. She hopes that other colleges follow the Wildcats’ lead and join in by holding their own challenge events.
“We challenged [Sacramento] State, UC Davis, Sonoma State and Humboldt State,” she said.
Amanda Rhine can be reached at [email protected] or @am_rhine on Twitter.
