Fundraising Goes over the Top with MMMBop and Body Waxing

One of the finer facets of American civil culture is the way many people don’t wait around for someone else to do something when trouble hits. While only government can marshal the needed resources to resurrect the Gulf Coast, people from all over are pitching in to raise a few dollars here and there. While the amounts won’t make much of a difference over all, these expressions of solidarity may make being an evacuee a little easier to stomach.

However, just what does one do to help? Phoning in some money to the Red Cross is never a bad idea, and the Salvation Army is the best sort of army. But for some people, activity is required. Thus, America is the land of bake-sales and charity car washes, of auctions with the proceeds going to [insert worthy cause here]. To stand out, charity fundraisers have to be creative. However, some are more creative than others.

One of the more intriguing stories to come out of the fundraising efforts is from Delone Catholic High School in Mcsherrystown, Pennsylvania. Not satisfied with the usual approach to fundraising of appealing to the better angels of mankind’s nature, the kids there have decided to be musical terrorists. "Let's annoy the money out of people," said Maria Landi, vice-president of student council when interviewed by the local Evening Sun newspaper. So, the 1996 bubblegum pop hit “MMMBop” by the highly irritating Hanson will play on the school loudspeakers until faculty and students cough up $3,000 in donations. Latest reports have them a little more than $700 short. One student offered a blank check to “Stop the Bop.” And rightly so.

However, that pales in comparison to the plans of five students at the University of North Dakota – which is in Grand Forks, a town that suffered its own dreadful flood in 1997. The Sioux Crew, the booster organization for the university’s sports teams, has found five young men who are prepared to have their body hair waxed off in exchange for donations.

At this year’s Potato Bowl (a big football game, the gravity of which can only be understood by those born in the region), UND students Dave Wedin, Peter Stengen, Adam Driscoll, Ryan Hofer and Mike Cook will allow donors to apply wax to their body hair and pull it off. Apparently, Mr. Wedin was watching “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin,” (an inane film which involves a scene where a hirsute fellow has that condition remedied via waxing), suggested it and as he later said, “Before I could back out, everything was planned.” A motto for most college students of any generation.

All the same, the number for the Red Cross is 1-800-HELP-NOW, and the Salvation Army’s website is here.

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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