A few weeks ago, after Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Harvey, the Las Vegas Shooting, extreme monsoons in India and all sorts of man-made and natural disasters wrought international havoc, often affecting our own Demon Deacons, Wake Forest Student Government’s executive board decided to act.

Parth Vaidya our Chief of Staff and myself, the President, found ourselves in a position where students were not only directly impacted by these disaster’s effects, but were ready to take part in an initiative to combat them.  

Through several meetings with student leaders like senior Halle Butler and freshman Maddie Ouzts, a week-long fundraiser benefitting both the American Red Cross and Tim Duncan’s Virgin Islands Hurricane Relief Fund was formulated.  

Students from Student Government, Traditions Council, Student Union, and OLAS came together forming this idea that came to be known as the Deacon Disaster Relief Fund, or DDRF for short. Here, Wake Forest students, alumni, friends and family would be able to provide emergency relief through the mindset of pro humanitate.  This initiative will take place from Thursday Oct. 26 to Friday Nov. 3 kicking off with a dinner at Putters, a local Winston-Salem restaurant known for great ambience, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday.  On Friday, and throughout the rest of the week, students will be selling ribbons with customizable messages on them to be tied around the railings of Reynolda outside of the pit for two dollars as a sign of solidarity.  We also wanted to recognize junior Sydney Packard and the ladies of Kappa Delta for their help with creating fantastic shirt designs to be sold in front of the pit every weekday from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. along with these ribbons and 9:00 a.m. – 11 a.m. on the third floor of Benson this Friday.  There are both long-sleeved shirts ($25) and short-sleeved shirts ($20) whose proceeds will go fully to the Deacon Disaster Relief Fund.  As a final exciting reward, the Wake Forest Traditions Council has received a basketball signed by all members of Wake Forest University’s Mens ACC Division 1 Basketball team as a reward to be given to the entity that donates the most amount of money to the Deacon Disaster Relief Fund.

We wanted to give a special thank you to Jorge Fournier (OLAS), Ben Weekley (Traditions Council), Jack Garvey (Student Union), Kate Hubbs (Student Union) and Kiya Khalil (Student Government) for all of their fantastic work as a cohesive team and group of leaders that made our vision come to life in just a few weeks.

Attached are links to Student Government’s Venmo account and the DDRF’s online fundraising page:

Link to venmo donations: @wake_sg

Link to Paypal donation platform can be found on the online pubication of this piece.

We can’t wait for your participation and support of this worthy cause! All donations will go 100 percent to the Deacon Disaster Relief Fund, Go Deacs!

We will be sending a brief broadcast email about this initiative to all students Thursday night.

Sincerely,

Spencer Schiller