NU students take the Penguin Plunge to support Special Olympics

By Dale Mauldin
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

Stephen Hodgson, a 19-year-old communications major from Derry, N.H., had never been more excited about jumping into the icy cold water of Lake Champlain, and he is looking forward to doing it again next year.

"It was fun," Hodgson said. "We had a chance to do a lot of fun stuff. I'm definitely doing it next year."

The eighth annual Penguin Plunge, which occurred on Feb. 15 in Burlington, Vt., was sponsored by Vermont Special Olympics and is one of their key fundraisers.

The event raises about one quarter of the funds for the year, according to Hannah Nelson, events manager of Vermont Special Olympics.

This year, the Penguin plunge has raised over $200,000, not including corporate sponsors or corporate matches, according to Nelson. She is expecting that in the end the Plunge will have garnered more than $215,000 for the organization.

There was a lot of planning behind this event by volunteers, and Nelson said it ran "like clockwork.

"We thought we may have had fewer plungers and spectators due to the freezing cold weather, but we were happily surprised to find that we actually had more people than ever," Nelson said.

In addition to the nearly 1,000 spectators and 630 plungers, there were 67 Norwich students giving their time and effort to help the event run smoothly.

"We provided cadets and, this year, civilian students," said Eric Braman, vice president for the study of counterterrorism and cybercrime.

Norwich student volunteers have come to be considered a vital part to this annual event.

"We really count on them to help make this a successful event," said Nelson.

This was the second year Norwich students have assisted in the Penguin Plunge. They took on the duties of traffic control, security, crowd control, and escorting groups of plungers to and from the staging tents to the water, Braman explained.

"This year, we got deeply involved in the traffic control," Braman said, adding that there were nearly 200 more cars than there were spaces, and Norwich did an outstanding job of redirecting traffic to a location three blocks away where participants could park and get on a shuttle bus.

The Burlington police felt that the students were doing such a good job that he let them take responsibility for the operation.

"[The police officer] was there for, like, 10 minutes. He just kept coming back once in while, then he just took off at the end of the day and let us do our stuff," said Justin Fitzgerald, a 19-year-old sophomore communications major from Malden, Mass.

Nelson praised the cadets for their work and looks forward to seeing more students come back next year.

"I don't know how this event would run without them," Nelson said. "I will continue to work with Eric Braman and [Norwich Director of Volunteer Services] Nicole DiDomenico to make sure that the cadets come back every year. We really count on them to help make this a successful event."

According to Braman, there were six students who raised the minimum $175 to donate, and took the plunge as well. Even though not all the students who went up to help participated in the plunge, most of them jumped in after everything was over.

"It was kind of a last minute thing," Hodgson explained. "We all stripped down to our boxers and jumped in with our BDU covers, so everybody knew we were from Norwich."

For Fitzgerald, the worst part of jumping was not entering the ice-cold water, but exiting.

"It's definitely cold," Fitzgerald said. "When you get out, then it's freezing; my hair froze."

Braman was very pleased to see that so many students were willing to donate their time and effort, but he is still looking forward to next year.

"The key to next year is to improve participation amongst our student body and actually raising money," Braman said.

One of Braman's goals is to find "a minimum of 200 students who would raise $200 each."

"It's not hard to raise $200, especially since it's going towards a good cause," Hodgson said.

Fitzgerald said students need more time to collect the money and that there wouldn't be as much of a problem raising money if people were informed sooner.

Braman agrees with Hodgson and Fitzgerald and plans to start promoting the event "early in the fall, right after students arrive."

He added that he plans to "get the word out" so that students can get donations from business and family members at home.

"Trying to get that much money in a small community like Norwich is in would be very difficult, because we would basically be donating to each other," he said, adding that it will take many motivated and "hard-core students" to accomplish this goal but in the end it is for a very worthy cause.

Hodgson agreed: "I think that if more people help out next year it will be really awesome."

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