Written by Blake Mathews
Two weeks ago, senior Sky Vanderburg and junior Sarah Kyle launched an ambitious fundraising effort for Haiti called InTents Night. Though the weather was frigid and the sky heavy with rain clouds as Friday, Feb. 5 approached, students were still signing up to spend the night in tents on the front lawn and raise money for Tents and Tarps.
Then, on the morning of the event, the front lawn flooded. Kyle and Vanderburg were forced to postpone InTents.
But last Friday, after moving from the front lawn to the Ganus Athletic Center, students and faculty came together to make InTents Night a success.
The event started at 10 p.m. with a benefit concert. For a $5 dollar cover charge, students were entertained by performances from Ben Cormier and the Family Band, Alex Free with members of the Emancipastries and the Belles and Beaux Remix.
None of the student bands were paid for their performances. Like all the money raised during InTents Night, the cover charge went toward the Tents and Tarps program, which has been supplying shelters for displaced Haitians since almost immediately after the devastating earthquake Jan 12.
The music played until 12:45 a.m., when what Kyle referred to as “tent camp curfew” went into effect. Anyone left in the GAC after that point would be locked in until morning.
Kyle said about 75 people signed up to camp out in the GAC. Each one was given an account with Kimbia, a fundraising Web site, and their own link to send to friends and family throughout the night. Each participant was asked to send his or her link to at least 10 people through text messaging.
“Hey, I’m here locked in the GAC. Send me money,” Vanderburg said as an example.
Professor Jimmy Huff led a devo at 1 a.m. and taught participants more about Haitian culture and history. After that, from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., Sky said InTents Night started taking care of itself.
“There was not one person wandering around saying ‘I don’t know what to do,'” Sky said. Some people played basketball and football, others played board games and one person was reportedly seen doing homework. By Kyle’s estimate, only 10 of the 75 participants spent any time sleeping.
A prayer tent was set up for people who wished to pray for Haiti, though prayers for anyone anywhere were also encouraged. Two tarps that would eventually head to Haiti were also laid out on the GAC floor, and participants could write messages in Creole for the tarps’ future owners to read. A list of Creole phrases — “We’re praying for you” was an example — was provided.
As the night ended and the sun came up, Aramark was on hand to serve the participants breakfast. Dr. Mark Elrod, who along with freelance photojournalist Philip Holsinger came up with the idea for Tents and Tarps, then spoke about the need for shelter in Haiti and how seeing the country and meeting its people has affected him personally.
By the end of the event, Vanderburg said roughly $2,000 had been raised, including a $1,000 donation from First Security Bank. The money was immediately invested in Tents and Tarps, which has raised at least $350,000 since its creation almost a month ago. Vanderburg said he was proud that $30,000 of that total has come from the student body.
Before the initial postponing of InTents night, Kyle and Vanderburg both knew about the bad incoming weather but were reluctant to push the event back because of the urgency of the need for shelters in Haiti.
“If I need a tent for this, how much more do they [Haitians] need a tent?” Kyle said in an interview with The Bison before the first InTents night. However, the standing water on the front lawn could have been a health concern, she said, and most of the musicians who were scheduled to play at the event backed out to keep their instruments from getting wet.
“It was impossible,” Vanderburg said. The weather would have turned the fundraiser into “so much of an ordeal that we wouldn’t have accomplished our purpose.”
That purpose, he said, was to raise awareness of the Haitian need for shelter. There likely would have been a small “hardcore group of people” willing to endure any kind of bad weather, Vanderburg said, but most would have been scared off and the event would have been “a flop.”
But canceling the event was never an option, Kyle said. Pushing it back gave her and Vanderburg time to reflect on what they wanted InTents Night to accomplish. They said they decided to make it less about games and novelty and more about forming connections between the students raising the money and the people who had seen where the money is going.
“This had kind of refocused us to really just take things a little more seriously and think about the purpose instead of just, ‘Oh, we’re camping on the front lawn. Awesome,”‘ Kyle said.
Although more people might have signed up for the front lawn version of InTents Night, Vanderburg said the smaller group in the GAC was better suited for reflection and fellowship. SA sponsor and event supervisor Dr. Jim Miller said he was perfectly alright with not sleeping out in the cold, and that if they had insisted on having the event outside, the weather might have delayed them even longer.
Vanderburg said the SA is not planning any more Haiti-specific events, though they will continue to work with aid organizations like Mana International. The Tents and Tarps Web site (www.tentsandtarps.org) will also continue to take donations indefinitely.
