The morning of April 27th, Cobeen Hall community members set up a swing set underneath the Raynor Memorial Libraries bridge and began their 24-hour swing marathon for the 10th year in a row.
For the last 10 years, the Cobeen community has brought awareness to eating disorders with an outdoor swinging marathon.
The marathon began Thursday at 10 a.m. and continued throughout the day and night until 10 a.m Friday. During this time, volunteers took turns swinging in 30-minute shifts and collecting donations for Rogers Memorial Hospital. The hospital serves children, adolescents and adults struggling with behavioral health issues.
For the last few years, Swing-A-Thon has been held in April and lasted for 24 hours, but it wasn’t always that way. Maria Glorioso, Cobeen’s residence hall director, said when she first started, the event looked completely different.
Glorioso said up until she started at Marquette three years ago, the event was called Freezin’ for a Reason and was held in January. She also added that the history of the event is based on the fact that eating disorders rest heavily within the female population.
“While (the problem of eating disorders) affects both genders, it’s typically more prevalent in females, and it was a cause very near and dear to having a single-gender building,” she said.
This year’s event was a little different. Cobeen celebrated the anniversary by altering the traditional event to become a week devoted to personal wellness.
The hall’s Community Programming Council (CPC) worked for the entire year to brainstorm and prepare for the benefit. It started with a night of yoga and healthy snacks. Later in the week, the CPC girls gathered in the basement to blend smoothies and raise money to kick off the fundraising aspect of the program.
Kaela Beugnet, a freshman in the College of Health Sciences and service coordinator for Cobeen’s CPC, said she began organizing the event with her committee about six months ago by completing the T-shirt design.
“With my committee, we started planning all of the events leading up to (Swing-A-Thon), and we bounced a lot of ideas around,” Beugnet said.
Glorioso also plays a significant part in putting on this event. She said the idea of annual events drives her to continue the program each year. “I think it’s really fun to have traditional programs,” she said. “Something that everyone knows is coming. Even if the freshmen of the building don’t know, everyone else on campus knows to be prepared for Swing-A-Thon.”
Beugnet said she relied heavily on her committee members to advertise for the event. Glorioso said she believes the event has so much success partially because residents and community members are attracted to the idea of swinging in the middle of the night. “When else do you get to swing with your friends at four in the morning?” she said.
For girls like Hannah Mascio, a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences, events like this are more than just swinging with friends. “One of my friends from high school struggled with eating disorders for a long time so I guess that’s part of the reason I’m doing this,” Mascio said.
By the end of the week, Cobeen raised $827.34 for Roger’s Memorial Hospital.
Glorioso said she hopes to see the event grow, because CPC service programs can benefit the city of Milwaukee, too. “I think it’s great that Marquette partners with different community programs to give back to the community in different ways,” she said. “It’s really great that (Swing-A-Thon) has the longevity that it does and I’m excited to see it continue to evolve.”
