Students ‘teeter-totter’ for a good cause

Posted on by
Student volunteers teeter-totter during their one-hour shift of the marathon. The Teeter-Totter Marathon has been an Ireland Hall tradition since 1990 and is used to raise awareness about domestic abuse and sexual assault. (Margaret Galush/TommieMedia)
Student volunteers teeter-totter during their one-hour shift of the marathon. The Teeter-Totter Marathon has been an Ireland Hall tradition since 1990 and is used to raise awareness about domestic abuse and sexual assault. (Margaret Galush/TommieMedia)

The Ireland Hall Association partnered with the Green Dot Program last week for the 26th annual Teeter-Totter Marathon to raise awareness for domestic abuse and sexual assault.

Student volunteers rode the teeter-totter outside the Anderson Student Center for one-hour shifts, collectively “teeter-tottering” for a total of 48 hours. All of the proceeds went to the Tubman Foundation, Minnesota’s largest provider of support services for survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault.

In previous years, the marathon ran for 72 hours on the Upper Quad. Justin Reuter, area director of Ireland Hall, said the reason for the time and location change was because it was difficult to find volunteers to fill up all of the shifts.

“Sure, we’re cutting back hours – 24 hours – but we’re exposing ourselves to a lot more students who are coming in and out of the Anderson Student Center,” Reuter said.

Reuter said the marathon is just one small way students can take a stand against domestic abuse and sexual assault.

“It’s an issue that everyone plays a role in solving, and the Teeter-Totter Marathon is just a response to it. We’re doing the back-end stuff – raising money, raising awareness,” Reuter said. “There’s a much broader cultural, systemic problem that we face when it comes to sexual assault, relationship violence and violence in general.”

Along with teeter-tottering, some volunteers participated in the Green Dot Challenge. The challenge was to see how many times partners could pass a green dodgeball back and forth for two minutes while on the teeter-totter.

Sophomores Genevieve Gates and Jordan McCauley were partners for the marathon and broke the record (at the time) for the Green Dot Challenge with 156 passes. Although teeter-tottering for an extended amount of time is harder than it looks, they said they were happy to raise awareness for an issue that “often gets swept under the rug.”

“Having people say ‘Why are you doing this? Why is there a giant teeter-totter on campus? That looks ridiculous’ … it’s a statement,” Gates said. “Once it becomes a tradition, people know what to look for, and that raises awareness and opens a conversation that you wouldn’t be able to have without the demonstration.”

Margaret Galush can be reached at galu4637@stthomas.edu.