Aaron Terrazas/The Hoya Student volunteers danced for 24 hours from Friday night to Saturday night to raise money for the D.C. Children’s Hospital and the Make a Wish Foundation.

The windows of the Sellinger Lounge are covered with black paper to keep the daylight out, and the Pep Band is playing “Hey Ya!” by OutKast. Sixty-two Georgetown students, wearing identical green Hoyathon T-Shirts and sneakers, are just warming up. It is Friday at 6 p.m., and they have 24 hours to go.

By 6 p.m. on Saturday, the dancers, while exhausted, learned that they had raised $27,533, the highest amount in the program’s four years, topping last year’s $21,000. The members of the board announced the amount raised at the closing ceremony, as the dancers sat on Sellinger’s floor and ate ice cream sandwiches to cool off.

“It’s not about how much money we raised,” Liana Del Papa (COL ’06), the chair for dancer and staff relations says. “We’re just happy that we can help people, and have people have a good time at the same time and have Georgetown students participate as a community.”

Seventy percent of the money raised will go to D.C. Children’s Hospital and the rest to the Make a Wish Foundation.

Each dancer has to raise a minimum of $100 to participate in Hoyathon, and the staffers also raise money. The audience, too, does not just play witness to the event, but contributes to the continuous fundraising and dancing, making Hoyathon the party of the night.

With 23 and a half more hours, Mark Murphy (SFS ’06) seemed unfazed.

“I get to dance for 24 hours, and people always tell me to stop dancing and now they are going to tell me to keep going,” he said.

John Sutherland (COL ’06), on the other hand, was more realistic. “Do I think I’m going to regret it? Absolutely,” he said. “[But] it’ll be worth it in the long run. I think they raised a lot of money, so it’s good.”

Aleksandra Trpkovska (COL ’06) said if Georgetown students can stay in the library for 24 hours to study, they can stay up to dance too.

Each hour during the dance marathon offered a different type of music – “a middle school hits hour, a booty call hour, an hour called `everybody gets leid’ – the Hawaiian dance hour,” Del Papa explained. Performers during the night included the Pep Band, cheerleaders, the dance team, Hellenic Society, Gracenotes and Saxatones.

Del Papa thinks not knowing the time makes life easier for the dancers. “If you’re only on hour five, and you’re like `Oh my God, I have 19 more hours to go,’ you’re not going to dance anymore,” she said.

The dancers, on the other hand, always find a way to keep track of the time. “We’re able to guess pretty well, because staff is coming every four hours,” Mike Bayer (COL ’05) said.

The dancers get three meal breaks and three rest breaks, during which they can sit down and get a massage from the staffers.

“The massage was excellent,” Anna Nikonorow (SFS ’06) said after her first 15-minute break. Nikonorow could not recall the name of the staffer who gave her a massage. “I have no idea, I couldn’t see them, I couldn’t hear them, I fell asleep, it was great.”

As the clock hits midnight, more and more students start filling up Sellinger Lounge. “I’ve only been here for a little while but I think it’s really great,” Christina DeJesus (MSB ’06) said. “It’s definitely just a party to go to, something alternative to do, because a lot of people are drinking tonight or whatever, it’s just a great thing to come out and dance, and just to have fun.”

Greg Booth (MSB ’06), the DJ of the Booty Call hour, said he was impressed by the crowd’s energy. “I’m going to go to sleep, come back [and] these people will still be dancing,” he said.

The dancers and the audience alike made requests to sing for the Corp’s karaoke hour. The Corp is the biggest sponsor of Hoyathon.

“It’s a great cause, we’re students serving students, we try to find organizations that do community service,” Brian McGovern (COL ’05), The Corp’s chief financial officer, explained. “We made a $1,600 cash donation, and then digital print cards from Full Exposure, free ovie Mayhem rentals, Corp cash, albums, frames and disposable cameras.”

Many corporate sponsors contributed to Hoyathon, including Domino’s, Ben and Jerry’s, Marriott, Cafe Europe and Starbucks.

“We had a lot of support from the Georgetown community on this,” said Stephen Medlock (SFS ’06), the chair for corporate sponsorships. “It’s really not that hard to get corporates into these to sign up. They really do want to help.”

Most of the sponsors help provide prizes and food in addition to financial support that will go to two charities, Benita Sinnarajah (NHS ’06), chair of the Hoyathon board said. “Definitely another big service group on campus that helped out a lot was [Alpha Phi Omega], they donated a lot of money, they raised a lot of money, a lot of them are dancing or staffing, and three APO members are on the board.”

Sean Garrett (MSB ’04), a member of APO and the chair of last year’s Hoyathon, is a dancer this year. “It’s a lot easier to be the chair when you can worry about things and not have to worry about dancing. Dancing for 24 hours straight is a lot tougher than anything I’ve had to do,” he said.