For the eighth year, the Ashland University St. Jude Chapter held it’s Up ‘til Dawn event on Feb. 5. The event is a fundraiser designed to raise money for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Up ‘til Dawn is a national event held at universities with St. Jude executive boards where participants stay up until 6 a.m. and participate in activities and play games to pass the time.

“It’s almost to walk in the shoes in what the kids have to experience in the hospital,” said Gaby Vitel, co-director on the St. Jude executive board on campus.

“They try to make it a fun environment at the research hospital. And with sicknesses, sometimes you’re staying up late and you’re family is there with you. So that’s what we do. We stay up in honor of them and sacrifice sleep.”

This year, the event was Pixar themed.

“We try to have a theme each year,” said Vitel. “That was recent, just so that we could tie in games a little bit better. This year we played Scene It, Jeopardy, we had obstacle courses, karaoke, and just a lot of fun stuff and it was all Disney and Pixar themed.”

With the conclusion of Up ‘til Dawn, Ashland’s St. Jude chapter has raised around $13,500 this year, with the student involvement in Up ‘til Dawn being a large factor.

“This year we broke a record. We had 103 participants sign up for the event, and we’ve never had over 100,” said Vitel. “You have to raise $100 to be able to enter the event and we had 40 participants, which is great. That was a very high number. We normally don’t get up to 40, but we’re normally between 30 and 35, so that was really good for us. What has grown is the awareness for the cause.”

The organization is even getting endearment from former members.

“We posted the pictures from the event, and one of the AU alumni that actually started St. Jude [on campus] commented on the page and said ‘I started this in 2008 and it’s really great to see the progress’ so it was good to see they thought we were improving,” said Vitel.

St. Jude provides care to children with life-threatening diseases and Vitel encourages anyone with even the slightest interest to support the cause.

“Anybody that is at least interested in the St. Jude cause and mission and wants to support it in any way should get involved with the cause. I think it is amazing,” said Vitel.

“Every penny counts for raising money for these kids that are in these research hospitals. I think that it’s really amazing, the work that we are doing at Ashland, which is such a small school. We’ve made such an impact on the hospital. I think that anyone that wants to be a part of something really big and make a contribution to a great cause, I think they should totally get interested.”