Rockin' for Research comes home tonight

What do the Amalgamates, Beelzebubs, Jackson Jills, Beats, and one John Dimsdale have in common, besides rhythm? They will all be performing in Goddard Chapel at 9 p.m. tonight in the annual Rockin' for Research concert.

The annual cancer benefit concert was organized this year by sophomores Mari Pullen, Erin Poth, and Dave Baumwoll, the chairpersons of the Leonard Carmichael Society's Cancer Outreach Program. The group is asking for a $5 donation at the door and hopes to raise over $4000 to donate to this year's benefit organization, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

In the past, the annual concert has only included a cappella groups, but Pullen, Poth, and Baumwoll decided to change that this year by extending an invitation to other performers around campus. "We wanted to draw a larger audience," Poth said. "All the a cappella concerts have a cappella groups, so we wanted to branch out as a change of pace."

Included in the program for the first time are the Beats, Tufts' percussive performance ensemble, and John Dimsdale, a sophomore pianist from San Diego who will perform a piece he wrote specifically for the benefit concert along with a few other selections.

All the proceeds from this year's show will go to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a cancer hospital in Boston which is dedicated to researching the disease. The institute, which was founded in 1947, has made several significant steps in the fight against cancer in the past and runs various Boston-based outreach programs to increase awareness of the potential threat of the disease.

In the past, proceeds from the concert have been donated to different locally-based cancer care or research charities, but Karb had worked at the Dana-Farber Institute over the past summer, and was aware that it was in need of money to fund different research projects.

"We originally were trying to pick an organization that had something to do with Boston," Pullen said. "It's more immediate because the funds are going to something in the greater Boston area, rather than someplace more general. They need the money for research, so we thought it would be a good cause for our concert."

All three coordinators originally got involved with the program because cancer had had some form of impact on all of their lives, and they have worked this semester to increase the organization's visibility around campus.

The concert is not the Cancer Outreach Program's only benefit. The group organized a football tournament in the fall that benefited the Make a Wish Foundation, and is planning a basketball tournament on March 14 that will include participants from 14 other schools around Boston in order to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. They have also decided to sponsor the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life for the first time this year.

"I think people have become a lot more aware," Poth said. "We're definitely one of the more visible groups in the LCS at this point in time, and we're trying to branch out and do different things -- not only things that raise money, but things that can get a large group of people involved."