Purple Glove Dance raises awareness for cancer, Relay for Life

On April 6, students gathered on Front Campus for the Purple Glove Dance in order to raise awareness about cancer and The GIVE Center’s Relay for Life team through a video competition sponsored by 4THEFIGHT.

Coordinators of the event, sophomore mass communication major Michelle McGuire and senior English major Mike Murphy collaborated for two months over the video in hopes of winning the contest for the second year in a row in order to win $5,000 for The GIVE Center’s Relay for Life Team.

The video is based off the song, “New Shoes” and “starts with a guy waking up and putting on a pair of new shoes to restart his life,” Murphy said. “It shows a guy going from his dorm room to the relay and as he passes people, they join in too and then once they get to the relay it’s a bunch of shots of people dancing and people holding up pictures of people they relay for like their family members or friends who have experienced or even died from cancer.”

This year’s video was the result of a more innovative idea in order to gain additional votes from the student body as a whole.

“This year we wanted more of a theme and that is why we had a mock relay set up on front campus at the end (of the video) when all the groups were dancing,” Murphy said.

Although the video was only recently put online for viewing and voting, it is “moving right along” and is already in first place, McGuire said.

Since she is the Relay for Life team captain this year, McGuire is especially excited and hopeful about the competition.

“I hope that we win the $5,000 for The GIVE Center’s relay for life team again. With the University’s help and the communities help, it makes it more important and raises awareness and gets The GIVE Center out there more,” McGuire said.

Although they hope their hard work will pay off, the duo recognizes the bigger picture as being most important.

“Winning the $5,000 for Relay last year was really cool, but no matter who wins, the money will go towards Relay and so the higher purpose is for us to help those who have been affected by cancer by raising this money,” Murphy said. “Ultimately, even if we don’t win, everyone who has seen our video has been affected in a positive manner.”

Ross Daniel, a sophomore mass communication and theatre major, was the main face of the video and was excited to be a part of McGuire and Murphy’s team.

“I saw the purple glove dance video last year and I loved it. I voted for it and it even gave me goose bumps to watch it,” Daniel said. “I was excited to participate (this year) because I knew it would help people and hopefully persuade people to go to and support Relay for Life.”

Daniel was encouraged by the amount of participation from students and the overall response from the university as a whole.

“I think it’s going to be bigger and bigger ever year they do it. Everyone was just all around excited to be spreading the word that we are all in this together and that we need to find a cure for cancer and any little thing you can do helps. It just shows how much love is in this world for people who are sick and it shows just how much happiness people can have despite how rough their lives may be.”

The results for the 4THEFIGHT video competition will be announced on August 5. Unlike last year, the results will be based off of the amount of votes each video receives, not the YouTube video views.

“We need the support of as many people as possible in order to win,” Murphy said.

Relay for Life will be held on April 29 at Baldwin County High School.

Posted by Brina Potvin on Apr 21 2011. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.