The first annual Dunne Funne Runne, in which students competed in a 3k costume relay race, took place Saturday.
The event fundraised for Education Bridge, a charity Dunne resident and senior Majak Anyieth founded. The non-profit organization helps to build and manage schools in South Sudan. Its goals include increasing access to education for both boys and girls and developing peace-building skills, according to the Education Bridge website.
During the event, 65 teams of three, including a team of priests, ran the 3k race, with each member of the team running one kilometer. A carnival followed the race, Dunne Hall Resident Advisor and senior Michael Griffin won a pie-eating contest.
Sophomore student organizer Justin McLellan said the creation of the event was a collaborative effort.
“We were just popcorning signature event ideas because we didn’t have a signature event for our new dorm,” McLellan said. “People just started spitting words out that rhymed, so we combined those to create Dunne Funne Runne.”
While still in the brainstorming process, the event was supposed to be a paint race, but it eventually evolved into a costume race, McLellan said. The winners of the race were determined based on costumes, not time. The winner of this year’s race was the team “Running from Gen Chem,” where members ran in lab coats, safety goggles and gloves.
Over the past few weeks, the students organizers of the Dunne Funne Runne have been working to promote the event on campus to increase turnout, junior student organizer Davis Gonsalves said.
“We emailed all the hall presidents and went to all the hall councils that accepted our request,” he said.
McLellan said the organizers used the power of social media to inform students about the event.
“We have a flyer that we posted on social media,” McLellan said. “We also made a Facebook event and shared it with everyone we know.”
McLellan said having a successful inaugural signature event will help make future Dunne Funne Runnes even better.
“We just wanted to have a good, solid first signature event that we can build off of for future years,” McLellan said. “This is going to be a lot of trial and error since it’s the first one ever, but ultimately we want a base for next year.”
McLellan said dorm participation was crucial in establishing the Runne.
“We just want as much participation as possible, especially within Dunne,” McLellan said. “I know we had a lot of people in Dunne do it this year, but we could always use more. Next year we want everyone from the start of the year to know about it and when it is, so we can get as many people from Dunne as possible.”
Other student organizers included juniors Brendan Watts and Pete Seidner and freshman Ben Huls.
