The University’s Student Union Board (SUB) held its annual “Dogs and Donuts” event on North Quad yesterday. The event, which lasted from 12 p.m.-2 p.m., provided students with two of the things that college students love most: animals and free food.
According to Kaya Moore, SUB’s director of programming, the event has gone through changes this year.
“SUB normally does ‘Puppies and Pumpkins,’ which is basically the same thing except that we have it in October instead of November,” Moore said. “But we realized that there were just too many Halloween events going on this year, and we wanted to do something different.”
Moore said SUB had already planned to move the event to sometime in November, but when they saw that National Doughnut Day was Nov. 5, they wanted to take advantage of the opportunity.
“We were a little late,” she said. “But it worked out.”
Heartland Small Animal Rescue Fundraising Chair Jan Caudell said volunteers from the organization were working alongside Notre Dame SUB members, holding and showing off the dogs as the students interacted with them.
“I believe that being around the animals generally improves the welfare of the students,” Caudell said.
She said the shelter hoped to do more than just provide the students animals to interact with. According to volunteer Barbara Sullivan, the shelter also hoped to raise awareness and recruit other volunteers.
“We wanted to show off the dogs but also attract some volunteers for foster homes or walking the dogs,” Sullivan said. “Most of our volunteers are much older, and they don’t like to walk in the winter because they’re afraid they’ll slip, which is why we definitely need younger volunteers to help out.”
Sullivan and others handed out business cards and shared information about volunteering while the students and pups interacted. She said the event went better than she could have hoped.
“We were only expecting about four dogs to come,” Sullivan said. “We were really worried, actually, that no dogs would be able to come. But there actually ended up being more than 10, which is pretty amazing.”
With their booth constantly restocking doughnuts for the Notre Dame students, the SUB event was the perfect way to, as Moore put it, “keep the students invested and happy.”
As Caudell said, the event was an easy sell to students.
“Who doesn’t love dogs and doughnuts?” she said.
