Our View: Shack-a-Thon has its faults, but it can be salvaged if Sooners adjust their attitudes.
It’s that time again. Organizations gathered Tuesday on the South Oval and slept overnight in temporary structures to help raise awareness of poverty issues during Habitat for Humanity’s annual Shack-a-Thon event. This event happens every year, and every year we offer criticism. It’s like a fall tradition.
But this year, we’re seeing things a little differently.
Yes, many of the participating organizations choose to conduct themselves in a way we find disrespectful to the very group they are trying to help — this year, we saw a shanty with a Tiki torch lined walkway and a student dressed in a cardboard robot costume. Some of the groups participating in the event even admitted many students view it simply as a nuisance.
But Shack-a-Thon is, ultimately, a good event, and it can be saved from this disdain and apathy with just a slight adjustment in attitude.
Erica Shakal, microbiology senior and president of OU’s chapter of Habitat for Humanity, said Shack-a-Thon actually benefits poverty housing, not homelessness as many believe.Poverty housing issues deal with people who are living in temporary situations, shelters or homes that are not up to standards.
That’s why the shacks make sense, because they represent the transient and unreliable housing situations of these people. It’s not playing “homeless dress-up,” as some have claimed. These are the people Habitat for Humanity helps, and Shakal said Shack-a-Thon is the primary fundraiser for Cleveland County Habitat for Humanity, raising an estimated $6,076 this year.
So the event itself is not essentially offensive. It’s only when some groups take things too far that it becomes a derogatory farce. Much of this inappropriate behavior seems to come about in the name of the competition to see which group can raise the most money.
We’re not against having fun, and the competition element is a good way to get people invested. But in any event, when the competition overshadows the philanthropy, the message gets lost. And this message is too important to fade behind a mass of students dancing to loud music and screaming for donations.
Shakal said she believes in this event, regardless of some students taking it too far. We’re starting to agree with her. We can envision a future in which Habitat’s message shines through loud and clear, and this event helps a struggling population to its full potential. But that future will only come about if Sooners — both participants and the general public — put the focus back on the issues at hand.
One day, this event could do just as much to restore dignity to discussions about poverty issues as it does to raise money.
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Nolan_Kraszkiewicz 7 months ago
I had a class in Copeland hall starting at noon and was constantly distracted by the incessant and rampant screams, hoots, hollers, and yells. The majority of the people visibly involved are the douche-y and superficial Greek-frat cliches and stereotypes that people often grimace upon the sight of anywhere outside of the off campus moral and ethical transgressions, the underage group drinking binges, and bad decision extravaganzas that plague the weekends.
Jaco99 7 months ago
Habitat for Humanity raises enough money to start construction of one new house every 4-5 years. It basically functions as either A) a way for fraternity/sorority members to accrue easy community service hours, or B) a way for ambitious "student leaders" to add another resume point. Shak-a-thon is just as productive in the number of new housing builds it engenders, as the $6,000 it raises is much more symbolic than practical (honestly, houses often cost $80,000-$120,000 to build. Your $6,000 does nothing). The problem with both is that they are manifestations of a society that cares more about the "morality" of helping the poor through symbolic, morally-masturbatory measures than through any clearly-defined governmental action. If we as a people cared as much about poverty issues as Shack-A-Thon proports to care (or at least more than the frat-boy who shouted "Be a bro and donate" at me earlier today clearly does) then events such as these would be unnecessary.
As it stands, Shack-A-Thon and Habitat for Humanity are irrelevant. They raise enough money to help no one, they are a beard for a society that baldly cares little for the poor, and they reduce the dignity of the poor by building "shacks" and having ill-educated frat-boys who don't care a damn for the poor shilling themselves for donations on the South Oval.
Please give me warning next year when these same people don blackface, shout "Ubu-Ubu" and have fake female-circumcision rituals on the South Oval to raise $5,000 for famine relief in Africa.